Advent Reflection: Waiting
Children longingly anticipate Christmas day when they can open their presents. They wait with excitement. Not all waiting is filled with excitement. Sometimes our waiting is punctuated with anxiety and fear. Such is often the case with those who are unemployed, waiting for meaningful work. Or with the one waiting for the results of a full body scan after enduring a grueling round of chemotherapy. Or the waiting of a childless couple who so much want to start a family. When the prophet addresses the covenant people in Isaiah 40, there were those in Israel who had been waiting for the end of the Babylonian Captivity and the return of the glory of the Lord to the land of Israel . Many had died in exile, without seeing that hope realized, but they clung to the promise that one day their suffering would end. All true waiting is a waiting with a sense of promise . For Christians, it’s a promise that we already, in part, have entered into. The Apostle Paul speaks of the ...