There is no shortage of waiting in life. Waiting for the weekend. Waiting to find out if you got that new job. Waiting to find out if you made the team. Waiting to hear the test results from the doctor. Waiting to get a driver’s license. Waiting to hear from colleges. Let’s face it: our days are packed with family obligations, work, school, sports and Netflix. But there is also a great deal of waiting in the midst of all the activity.
We can definitely relate to this idea of waiting because chances are it was only a few minutes ago that we were waiting for the delivery guy to arrive with dinner, or waiting to get a text back, or waiting in traffic to get here on time. We know what it’s like to wait.
Because we wait so much, we can be tempted to think of Advent as just another time spent waiting for something to happen. We log in the four weeks of waiting (or in the case of 2017, three weeks and a Sunday afternoon) and then we celebrate Christmas.
Yet this waiting is very different from what we would do at a fast-food drive thru window. Christmas celebrates the Incarnation — the fact that the Son of God became human in order to redeem us. In other words, God loves us so much that he waits for us, too.
Advent is a time for us to consider how God has been seeking us, inviting us and even waiting for us. Unlike the way we wait for our coffee order, Advent is a season of active waiting — an opportunity to reflect, pray, and meditate on God’s desire for us.
Waiting can be hard. But unlike the many things we wait for in life, Advent especially invites us to dwell on the mystery that God seeks us — seeks you, seeks me, seeks the person who annoys us the most, and the person who is most overlooked — He seeks us all not because of obligation or duty but simply because He loves us.
The heart of God is waiting for us. The challenge is to silence all the distractions of the season and focus on encountering our Lord and Savior. O come, let us seek Him. O come, let us adore Him.
