“Christmas is coming! I can’t wait!”
Little (and not so little) kids all around the world are feeling that way this time of year. They are full of hope and anticipation. They know something really great is coming, and it is hard to wait for it to get here.
As Christians, we are a people of waiting. Israel waited for liberation from Egypt. They wandered the desert and waited for their promised land. They waited for the end of exile (more than once!). And they waited for the promised Messiah. There were about 400 years between the writing of the last book of our Old Testament and the birth of Jesus! That’s a long time to wait for a promise. This is our family history. We are the descendants of those who waited.
In our day, we no longer wait for the birth of Jesus the Messiah. In this season called Advent, we remember that our God came. He became human—born to a virgin mother. He lived, died, and rose again. Jesus unleashed a whole new paradigm for His people—the age of the Holy Spirit. Where our very bodies are His temple—where He dwells by His Spirit. That’s amazing! A promise is fulfilled.
Now we wait for another promise—the promise of his return. This world around us is saturated by the effects of sin. We see it and we feel it. We ache in waiting for something to be done about it. The Bible says that the created world itself groans in this waiting. We wait for the return of Jesus—when he comes back and sets right all that has gone so wrong. The word for that is redemption. He will redeem it all.
We know something really great is coming, and it is hard to wait for it to get here.
When the waiting is hard, we can lean on the example of our predecessors who waited. Lean on Simeon, who waited with the Holy Spirit upon him. Lean on Daniel, who waited in faithfulness and prayer. Lean on David, who waited patiently to take his promised throne. David wrote this in the 27th Psalm:
Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord! (Psalms 27:14)
In Hebrew, the word for “waiting” implies anticipation and hope. Just like these men, we hope into the promise and live into the time until the promise is fulfilled. We wait, full of the Holy Spirit, faithful, prayerful, and patient. Something really great is coming—Jesus will return!