REsources for Living
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You’re standing there in the cold, waiting for the bus to come, and every minute feels like an hour. You’re waiting for the phone call that will give you the results of a medical test, and the more you try not to think about it, the more your pulse races in fear. You’re waiting for your birthday to come, or for the start of vacation, and the anticipation is half pleasure and half agony.
One way or another, life seems to involve as much waiting as doing. We can’t shoot hoops until our friend arrives, can’t go out until the baby wakes from a nap, can’t make a decision without information that won’t be available until Thursday. It’s the story of our lives, but more particularly it’s the story of this season. In the Christian liturgical year, this is Advent, the time of waiting. What an amazing idea. Not only do you get a holiday, you also have a holiday about waiting for the holiday to come.
It seems, somehow, so terribly old-fashioned. After all, we are busy people. There are things to get done, jobs to perform, hobbies to pursue, information we must gather. Of course we spend time waiting, but it’s something we minimize, not celebrate. We check our email while in line at the grocery store. We squeeze in a few exercises as the computer boots up. What could we modern, busy people want with a holiday—a whole month of holiday—that is all about waiting?
The Advent we see around us is often more commercial than religious. From about Halloween to Christmas the carols come on in the grocery store and the ads on TV are full of snow-flocked trees and gift wrapping and Santas selling everything from carpeting to package delivery. And, of course, there is a time of waiting as we count off the days remaining before the presents need to be mailed or the cookies need to be baked or the Christmas letter needs to be written, with the reward of the holiday itself gleaming there at the end of the line.
It is, it seems to me, a time of waiting not unlike standing in line for the big roller coasters at Disney World. It’s a time of enduring the present with your eyes on the big pay-off at the end. You inch forward, surrounded by a bunch of strangers who have a tendency to push. And when you finally get to your destination and hop into the car with your friends, there is the adrenaline rush of that quick ride, which is great fun, but leaves you feeling just a little bit sick to your stomach at the end.
That’s not the kind of waiting that the holiday of Advent is supposed to be about. The waiting of Advent is, not surprisingly, much more like waiting for the arrival of a baby.
It’s a chance to stretch our hearts, to make room for more love. It’s a time to rearrange the furniture in our crowded lives, to find a place where love can stay. It’s a chance to consider whether, when love comes knocking at the door, we simply declare “No room!” and tell it to go sleep in the barn.
The season of Advent reminds us that times of waiting are not necessarily about emptiness—that they could, instead, be times of openness. Advent is a time of knitting booties or sewing quilts, redecorating a room or building a toy box, all of which are excuses for creating the open space in our minds to dream about the possibilities of who the coming child might be and what kind of gifts they might bring.
In the end, the season of Advent comes down to hope. As long as we are waiting, as long as we can imagine that there is something good in store, we can afford to go on in the face of all of life’s hardship. The remarkable thing about waiting for a baby is that you never know who will arrive. You don’t know what they will look like, what talents might develop, what personality will take shape. It’s the one time in life that there is nothing to calculate, no costs and benefits to weigh and analyze, no bets to hedge. You simply make a choice to open your heart and your life to love, and be glad at whatever comes. You may wait impatiently. As anyone who’s ever been pregnant can tell you, you may wait uncomfortably. But you wait in the anticipation that something as precious as it is unknown is just around the corner. And in that waiting, in that open space where we practice unconditional love, hope can’t help but catch and grow and shine through the long night.
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