Advent is not for the faint of heart. Advent marks the period before Christmas when we wait for Jesus’ arrival as a baby on Christmas day – and a time when we remember that we are still waiting for Jesus to arrive. Waiting for God isn’t easy. When Jesus asked the disciples to wait while he prayed, they fell asleep because Jesus’ prayers were a little too long-winded for them (Matthew 26:36-46). When Ezekiel became a prophet and needed to tell the people about an upcoming siege against Jerusalem, God made him lie on his side without moving for 430 days while he waited for the people to be convinced of God’s seriousness. And (as many Christians see it) when God promised Isaiah that “a shoot [would] come out of the stump of Jesse” and Israel would be restored, they had to wait hundreds of years for Jesus to come along. My wife grew up near in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, where a Protestant (Pietist) “cloister” was established in 1732. At the cloister, celibate men and women practiced a … [Read more...]

I waited patiently for the LORD; he inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the LORD. – Psalm 40:1-3 Advent is the time when we celebrate most everyone’s least favorite spiritual practice: waiting. It is that famously in-between time, when we are neither where we were nor where we are headed. Few people set out with the goal of waiting, except perhaps fishermen. But every single day, wait we must. Dr. Seuss described it in his book “Oh, The Places You’ll Go!” He said there are high flying times and scared times in life, but everyone sooner or later finds themselves in the waiting place. Sometimes we approach church like the world’s largest waiting place. There is less commotion than at the airport, and more space than at the doctor’s office, but most people … [Read more...]