Waiting and Way

This is a post I wrote for Advent season. As you await a real France ministry update, I thought it appropriate. Long story short--GBU Congres National, GEM Muslim and immigrant training in Berlin, pointed discipleship encounters with GBU women, planning for last month in France, I'm in Oklahoma now for my sister's AMAZING art show and college graduation. I promise, a real update by the end of the week. Until then...

If there is one theme that keeps resurfacing in ministry and personal contexts it is this—waiting. What an apt season we have entered into as well as such discussions arise, Advent. It is the season of looking for Christ, the tones of which I hear reflected in each conversation—faithful weariness, excited anticipation, confused frustration, unsure steps, darkened ways. Catholics, as I have sadly only learned in France, do not place Jesus in the manger scene until Christmas day. It keeps us coming back, doesn’t it, a tangible reminder that he is yet to come, that some of his promises and yes, even some of his presence is yet to be given us?

But we are not cultivated to respond well. Our “total satisfaction or money back guarantee” culture tells us to look only once and if Jesus or whatever we are waiting on hasn’t shown, we should go look elsewhere for it. We do not need to learn how to wait for that which we know is coming (faithfulness), we do not need to learn how to keep coming back (perseverance), we do not need to learn how to at times live in tension, with great hope, with unmet anticipation (patience). All we know to do, current culture models, is to not spend our time waiting, because it really is a bother after all, and to get filled up elsewhere. Our time and days are too precious to waste in anticipation, to spend in waiting, we think. And so we leave the Nativity even though it’s not yet Christmas Day, and we go in search for something or someone else, which we are sure, we convince ourselves, will satiate just as well.

Except that this isn’t a very Biblical response to waiting, is it? As I recently wrote, I’ve wanted to study and to spend some time in reflection on why it is that we wait, for what it is that we wait, how are we to wait? I do not have the capacity to have found answers for all of these nor have I had the time to thoroughly seek out complete answers in what I have found. Yet, I have found this pattern and this truth.

God is a God of the waiting. The sea awaited its inhabitants. Adam awaited his equal partner. Abraham and Sarah awaited a son. Noah waited for the storm to clear. Joseph waited for the right time to reveal his identity to his brothers. The Israelites awaited their release from captivity…multiple times. Hannah awaited Samuel. David waited for the throne. The Jews awaited their Messiah. Mary Magdalene waited for Jesus. Thomas waited to see his hands. Paul waited to be rejoined with those he loved and had to leave often. And we are at once participating in and waiting upon the Kingdom of God.

But Yahweh God is always God of fulfilled promises, who makes a return on his word after he has asked others to wait, apart from a time schedule most of these characters and us would choose. One further point also needs to be made. Waiting reveals to persons on earth a profound aspect of God’s character—patience. While we may be very excited to run around in our great hurries, he is in no rush.

What does this mean for how I minister here and for how in general we who call ourselves Christians are to live? For ministry, it means I encourage women truly seeking--to know God’s heart, to live rightly, to believe, to have answers to their questions--to keep pressing in. It means I give them specific Scriptures or examples I have found that can personally encourage them. It means I walk prayerfully into each conversation, into each encounter, listening well to better understand for what it is they wait and seek, what are the roots. It means I trust the Holy Spirit to be constantly at work to be in the business of fulfilling God’s promises to these women. It means I personally trust and lay aside my wrestlings for the sake of modeling what it means to rest in a season of unrest (because if there is one thing that caring for souls entails, it is unrest), not mindlessly but carefully and out of deep faith. It means together we seek the coming Jesus, for indeed he is coming.

As Christians it means we embrace waiting rather than run from it. It means we rest next to the manger, through the cold nights, the long days, and keep peering over the edge for a glimpse at perhaps the Arrived One. It means that we wait with all the other stragglers and harried companions who know deep down we were “designed to be dissatisfied” until at last we may look on the holy face of the Holy One. It means we embrace the tension and frustration of the “now but not yet” and press into the long moments that leave us weary but at the end of which are great riches we cannot even fathom.

Do we really want to be instantly satisfied? Maybe, on our rough days, on our honest days too, we want instant—oatmeal, satisfaction, relationships, experiences, knowledge, direction…or money back. But we are told to wait, to trust, to press on in faithfulness. I of all am a most skeptical disciple of the Nativity and the Cross. Some days I question God’s faithfulness in return and I really wonder, are you going to show up? Are you going to do a work? Is your Son really coming?

Mary and Joseph are traveling. The shepherds are tending their sheep. The angels are readying their robes and horns. King Herod is pacing the throne room. And somewhere in this great expanse of universe our Great Love is readying himself for us. May we learn not only to seek him but to await him.