Waiting is tough, it can be extremely difficult.  The Christmas season has more than its share of waiting, it can be torture. Waiting to give and receive gifts, waiting for the food, waiting for family, waiting for beloved traditions, waiting, and waiting, and waiting.

One of my favorite torturous Christmas waiting stories came from a coworker of Andrea’s following a Christmas break.  She told of her three year old who could not wait for Christmas morning, everyday, and multiple times each day he would ask ‘how much longer?’  Finally, Christmas Day arrived and this toddler found that he still had to wait.  Way to early on Christmas morning, while it was still too dark to celebrate anything, the little boy appeared at his mom and dad’s bedside.  He quietly waited for them to wake up until he could wait no more.  He began to softly talk, then, when that received no response he spoke louder, again no response, he continued to increase the volume until it was clear drastic action was needed.  He reached up and began to gently tap, and then a little less gently tap on his parents arms.  When they awoke, again they told him he would have to wait a little longer.  Disappointed, he turned to walk away, as his mother reminded him to stay away from the tree and presents until they could all do it together.  Then tone of his response set of a warning bell in the mom’s mind and so she asked, “Have you already been to the tree and the presents?’ He responded no and continued out the door, she watched him walk away and noticed that on his feet were his new Spongebob house shoes that had been wrapped and placed waiting for him to open that morning.

Like I said, sometimes waiting is tough, but on certain occasions it is impossible.

Waiting is a mainstay of the our faith.  If you consider the Biblical historical events there is a huge element of waiting embedded in each.  Eve waiting outside the garden for a child, Noah waiting for the floods to come and then for them to recede, Abraham and Sarah waiting for a fulfillment of God’s absurd promise, Joseph waiting in a dungeon, Moses waiting for God’s affirming sign, Joshua waiting on the walls of Jericho to fall, Isaiah and Jeremiah and quota of prophets waiting on a people to listen, Elijah waiting on a mountain side, Joseph and Mary waiting on a miraculous birth, Anna and Simeon waiting for the arrival of the Messiah…. And the list goes on and on.

Waiting is universal but it is also unique to us humans.  An animal can crouch waiting on its prey, a plant can wait on gemination, my dog can sometimes wait on breakfast lunch and dinner and treats in between, but with each of these, when the moment arrives the anxiety of the waiting is complete.  Whereas, in our faith, the moments of waiting may be finally fulfilled, but each time of waiting is a sub wait of an ultimate wait.

It would seem to be an almost mean system, designed by a arrogant God, to toy and mess with us.  Actually, the waiting is a precious gift given by our merciful and compassionate God, our God who is also our biggest fan.

Actually, the waiting is only understood in the context of a more exclusively human characteristic – another gift from our loving God.  The waiting is really just a symptom of our larger issue, and that is the element of time. 

Dr. Christopher Davis of Memphis Theological Seminary says that ‘time was made for humans, not for God.’ adding, ‘Thus, God is not in a hurry.’

This may be the most blatant disconnect between humans and God. God is in no hurry, we are almost always in a hurry.  God takes the time for the right time, we plow through seldom considering the collateral damage to ourself or others. Ironically, the creation of time is because we because we desperately need it. Time holds us back until it is the right time, time paves the way for us to be a part of God’s timing, time refines us to be ready and prepared for the exact time.  Time gives us the opportunity to allow hope to replace hopelessness, the hope that gives us the strength to wait and the power to persevere in the midst  of time.

Influential Greek statesman Pericles said, 

‘Time is the wisest counselor of all.’    Pericles   

The apostle Peter said,

‘But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.’    II Peter 2:8 

The apostle Paul said to the believers in Corinth,

I cannot stop myself from thanking God for all the tools he has given you in your wait for Jesus.  He has not only enriched your lives but he has guided you in your pursuit of a very personal understanding of your faith, your story, now you can not only live it out naturally but you can put that story into your words when anyone asks for an explanation. I told you Christ would do this, and now Jesus has!  It is amazing what God has done. In the midst of you waiting for him, in the midst of your struggle with time. Now you not only have God’s grace but you also recognize his blessing on this part of your journey, God has set all the tools in front of you that are essential in order for you to wait, the tools that are the power God has instilled in your to successfully flourish during this wait – you will be ready when Jesus returns. Even more amazing is the fact that, at that end of wait, end of our time moment, you will still be free from sin and guilt because of what Jesus has done for and given to you.  You can rest assured that God will do what God says God will do, we know because God always does what God has promised to be done!

I Corinthians 1:4-9

It was the exact right time as Joseph and Mary sat in a stable surrounded by by animals, feed, and poop, to see the culmination of their wait.  Sometimes the exact right time, the end line of a wait, finds us surrounded by poop.  It was by this time that these two young people had grabbed ahold of the hope God was setting in front of them.  It was not something visible that they could show others, it had been reinforced by events and words that could only be captured by the heart and the mind.  Hope is unseen, based on the unseen, but once we grab hold it guides us through time, it affirms us through the often hopelessness of our human response to time. 

Here is truth about time and waiting. Hope always precedes our problem. While we know that Mary and Joseph experienced difficulty and even doubts up to, and assuredly after, the birth of Jesus, we know that they were surely rejected and isolated, even moments of isolation from each other, God’s hope was still always there.  God’s hope and been a part of their journey from birth, it had actually be there before creation, waiting on the need to surface.

Over a century before the Israelites were attacked, conquered, and carried away to slavery, God already was revealing HOPE.  The prophets were calling them to return to God but at the same time their prophetic message was salted with Hope.  Isaiah spoke to a generation that they, themselves, would have passed by the time of the exile but their descendants would suffer – still, God spoke to the Hope that would be waiting for them.  This prophet did not speak with soft and gentle words, he was confronted and aggressive but still he could not help but point out that, even in their rejection of God, Hope would still be there waiting on the moment they would cry out to God. 

‘From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for God.’

Isaiah 64:4

The highly influential Charles Spurgeon, the 1800s British preacher still known as  the “Prince of Preachers” around the world, said,

‘God does not wait for us to return to him. He meets us. He comes to us the moment that we turn our feet towards his throne, [the moment we remember and cry out to him]. While we are, like the prodigal, a great way off, he sees us, and has compassion upon us, and runs to meet us.’ 

Hope always prepares us for the even greater hope, is enables us to weather the wait, it calls on us to be awake and alert, to see and participate in own preparation process.

I am convinced that this Advent season we are in a world wide time of wait.  A time when God is allowing us into our own preparation for the greater hope ahead, the greater wait on the horizon.  Seldom does has the entire world knowingly faced the same wait as it has this past year.  We have seen millions die and even more millions infected. We have been forced to step away from the life we considered normal and, instead, wear masks, meet on a computer screen, to stay in our homes, to shut down businesses, schools, and churches.   At the same time we have been confronted with some realities that we have failed to fully see up to this point.  God has opened the gates, he has forced us to open our eyes, he has woke us up and turned made it so that we cannot turn away from our problems, we can no longer ignore them.  In the midst of a pandemic we have seen protests in our streets spurred on by a deeply hidden in plain sight racism that has oppressed generation after generation of humans created by our God.  We have seen a divided country that has made sport out of our own destructive divisiveness. These plus many other realities have been in our view and impossible to ignore, impossible to dismiss.

But dismiss we often to.  It is probably the most powerful tool evil has in its tool box. We see the protests and proclaim that they should not be so noisy or violent, we hear of the political divide and we attack those with whom we differ using terms that villainize but never are truly and honestly defined. We choose to expand our division rather than seeking to bridge the gap.  We have seen churches defend their rights to gather at the expense of the health of their congregants and even more than that, the risk to those who encounter any that chose to act in a disregard of the health of others.  Even a pandemic has been politicized to the point that wearing or not wearing a mask is a political statement.

We have squandered an opportunity to let God grow us in our understanding of ‘Love all your neighbors.’  We have taken a moment of refinement to strengthen our ability to wait, to weather time, to grab ahold of the tools he has given us, to open our eyes and see what we have failed to see.  We have been surrounded by poop and instead of grabbing a shovel to clean up, we just added more. And, we then have found ourselves anxious, resentful, hateful, angry, delirious, scared, and sadly, in much the same way that we were before we had ever hear the word Covid.

This applies to us all, me included.

As Jesus spoke to his intimate followers in his final moment before his arrest, this was on his mind.  He knew that as he suffered the nonhuman horror that he was about to face, his followers would travel their own journey of pain, misery, frustration, and the temptation to default to hopelessness. He knew that these next days, as the followers faced all that was about to take place, Jesus knew it was not going to be the end of their wait, even this would further prepare them for more waiting, more unbearable human time.  So, he told them to watch for the signs, to not be unaware, to hold on to the hope from God who had never, and would never, let them down.  He called them to stay awake, to keep a watchful eye, to hold lightly their own speculation of how it would all play out, and to make the most of the waiting in between, to let God grow and prepare them, to hold onto the hope in the midst of the poop. To continue to trust, to hold on to hope, to continue to live and work, to continue to shovel and clear, to turn from the voices that called them to anything else, he was actually calling them to Hope that would lead to Peace, and to Peace that would stand them on Love, resulting in a Love that can carry a world.

To look for the coming blooms on the big tree, a sign that spring and summer are close.

Let’s return to where we started, with the words of Dr. Dr. Christopher Davis,

‘The reality is that God reserves the right to keep us waiting; time was made for humans, not for God. Thus, God is not in a hurry. The Lord is worth waiting for.  No matter how long it takes, no matter what you have to go through, when you get to the place that God has purposed, planned, and provided, or you receive what God has promised, prepared, and produced, you will gladly testify that it was worth the wait. Sometimes God uses slow because we are not ready for what God wants to give to us? Sometimes God uses slow because the ultimate end is not our gain but God’s glory.  We would do well to remember that God is not human, thus does not lie and has no need to repent. In other words, God is gonna do what God said. What we go through cannot cancel what God told us. Because God’s Word is more powerful than any struggle we go through along our way. If God said it, I don’t care how long it takes. I don’t care what we have to go through. I don’t care what comes at us. None of it is strong enough to revoke, rescind, retract, reverse or repeal God’s promises. God promised to be the God of Israel, and they were to be God’s people. Thus, slow is never to be confused with no.’

Dr. Christopher Davis, Memphis Theological Seminary

The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of  slowness, but is patient with you not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.  

II Peter 2:9-10

Let’s close with a look at a jumbled pile of bullet points (remember the the text  of this message will be included with the video posted tomorrow),

• Wait and Time are realities in our humanity and our faith 

• Hope is essential in wait and wait is essential in Hope 

• Hope focuses us back on work to be done, waiting without hope leaves us longing for past normal and a failure to grow in the waiting 

• Hope always precedes our problems

• Hope is always our preparation for a greater hope

• Hope enables us to wait, Hope empowers us to weather  time 

• Hope is recognized when our heart is looking and our mind  is searching

• Hope ushers us into peace and holds us there 

• Hope is on God’s plan not our agenda 

• Hope is on God’s perfect and timeless non-time table
• Hope is grounded in God’s sacrifice and our intentional faith

• Hope leads to Peace, Peace stands us on Love, Love carries the world

Today, as we begin this season of ‘wait’ we light the Advent candle of Hope, next week we will light the candle of Peace. In the meantime, this week, look for hope, grab ahold of it and don’t let go.  It may require that you let go of many other things, because sometimes it is impossible to keep a tight hold on Hope while holding things that interfere with hope, but as God refines and prepares you, the work he does will make the letting go worth the release of your grasp.