Waiting

Life seems to be a series of waitings; there’s always something ahead of us, just out of reach. And whether it’s a good thing we want to happen, or a bad thing we want to be over, the anticipation can overwhelm us sometimes.

This week, my wife and I were waiting for news from a hospital, where a loved one was awaiting surgery after a trip to the emergency room. The combination of a very crowded hospital that delayed what should have been a fairly routine surgery to mend a broken bone, a dying cell phone battery that seriously limited our ability to communicate, and the thousand mile distance, made the whole thing an agonizing ordeal of waiting. We felt helpless and stuck in time until we got the word, “I’m home.”

The Christmas season is also a time of waiting. For children, it’s about presents, and decorations, and family visits. For Christians, it’s about re-experiencing the long awaited birth of Jesus, the Savior. But it is more than that. We look beyond the birth of Christ and look forward to His return. When we sing “O come, O come, Emmanuel” we do so not in retrospect, but we sing with a view toward the future.

This waiting for Jesus return has a little bit of both kinds of anticipation. In one sense, we suffer as we experience the consequences of sin and death in this life. We want that to be over. More positively, we want to see Jesus face-to-face; to live in the light of God’s glorious presence. In fact, ALL of creation is in a waiting mode, holding its breath as it were, in anticipation of Jesus return.

In the book of Romans, the Apostle Paul writes, “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” Romans 8:22-23 (ESV)

And Jesus said to the Pharisees as the palm branch waving crowd lined the streets, cheering His entry into Jerusalem,“I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.” Luke 19:40 (ESV)

Patient waiting is the hallmark of the Christian Faith. Already saved, but not yet perfected, we suffer the realities of this life while looking forward to a better and greater reality, when Christ returns and makes all things new.