“I just can’t wait to have patience, ‘cause patience is a wonderful thing…”
Those were the lyrics to a song I remember singing in Sunday school as a small child. Even then I sang them with irony, because I hate to wait.
It’s become popular to hate on 2020 as a terrible, no-good, very bad year. And to be sure, it’s not been great. For most of this year, most of the people I know have been waiting… waiting for an end to COVID lockdowns, to the virus itself, to the economic effects, to the social effects… to all the ways it’s disrupted our lives. This year, we have all been forced to wait for many of the same things. And, if you’re like me, you’re not very good at waiting.
Patience—it is said—is waiting with a hopeful attitude. It’s not a foot-tapping, hurried thing. It’s a hopeful, longing tension that is convinced that resolution is coming. Yet when I look across my news feeds, I do not see patient waiting, but edgy, impatient, demands being made of pastors, politicians, parents, and anyone else with the presumed authority to fix our collective problems. Now, don’t think that I’m scolding you. I’ve been just as impatient at moments. I’ve clamored for the arrival of a vaccine, the appearing of a solution, and the approach of something better. And in that sense, I’ve been in a posture of advent for months.
And, so have you.
Advent means “arriving,” or “appearing.” Christmastime is, then, a perfect time to remember he for whom we wait, and remind ourselves of the hope there is in the waiting.
Remember He for Whom You Wait
We have the benefit of hindsight. The gospels each record their own version of the advent story. Taken together, they tell us the story of how God took the form of a human imager, because all the other human imagers were obscured by sin. We remember that God has done something decisive to fix, heal, restore, and renew a world that is broken and bewitched by sin. As 2020 ends, remember that you’re waiting for him—for Christ. You’re not waiting for a politician, a pastor, or some other human leader. You’re not hoping in a technology, or even in a rejuvenated economy. 2020 has already shown us how fragile such hopes really are. You and I are waiting for Christ. At Christmastime, we remember that he has come, and he will come again.
Remind Yourself of Hope
Waiting can be excruciating. Proverbs says that “hope deferred makes the heart sick” (Prov. 13:12). But when we remember he for whom we wait, we can remind ourselves that our waiting isn’t wishing—expecting a future of fairy tales. No, our waiting is oriented on the one who will, in fact, split the sky, bring justice to the world, and bind up the broken-hearted. He is coming, and in Him we may have hope. Why? Because he has already come, and already promised.
I still can’t wait to have patience. But as I remember He for whom I wait and remind myself of the hope I have in him, my waiting is transformed from a stand-still of cynicism into a surging, renewing, hard-working longing for the future that the blood of Christ bought, and the babe in the manger began.