Good morning! Wow, it’s frosty out there!
Today’s scripture:
Psalm 27: 1, 4-5, 13-14
The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life;
of whom shall I be afraid?
One thing I asked of the Lord,
that will I seek after:
to live in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to behold the beauty of the Lord,
and to inquire in his temple.
For he will hide me in his shelter
in the day of trouble;
he will conceal me under the cover of his tent;
he will set me high on a rock.
I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage;
wait for the Lord!
I have to admit…I am not the biggest fan of waiting. The symptoms of a cold started Sunday afternoon and I started to get grumpy. This would slow me down. Can’t afford to be slowed down…especially this week…especially this season. So I talked with God about it and tried to make a deal. If I took care of myself Sunday afternoon, could I keep going the rest of the week? Seemed fair to me. Then yesterday I was pretty vague in the head but I took meds and kept on going with a little bit of slow to my step. I really couldn’t rally to go work out but I walked the dog around the neighborhood. I had to stop to rest a little more often but ran errands, emailed away, and went to where I needed to go. Lots of fluids, lots of vitamins. And still I don’t want to wait to heal. This morning I am still not 100 percent recovered. My nose is not feeling so hot and I am pretty tired. I wait and I wait and somehow have to slow down a bit which drives me nuts.
Last night I got to help celebrate Kristin and Brian Anderson await their new little one. We played games, ate goodies, and showered them with baby gifts in anticipation for the baby. I have to say I am thrilled that this little one will be born and I find myself saying, “Come already kiddo. We want to meet you.” I know that at times the couple feels the same way and still we wait. The baby will come when the baby and all are ready.
I was talking to another leader in the church on Sunday and he said to me, “you know we should just move on this…I don’t like to wait.” I wholeheartedly agreed and at the same time could feel a need to wait a bit so we could talk more to more people. Sometimes it seems to be much smarter to get more people on board when we are moving than to just do…even if it is our nature.
And I say all of these things in the midst of Advent which is a season I love and I can’t stand all at once because it is all about waiting. We are waiting for healing…for the birth of a child…and for movement all in one season. While the world wants us to go go go the season is saying hold on and wait a minute. Now, this kind of waiting is an active waiting. We are waiting in order to prepare. We are waiting in order to ready ourselves. We are waiting in lovely anticipation of what is to come. This is still hard for most of us. The Psalm writer knew this as well. The psalm writer implores us to wait because in those moments of waiting we might just see God and gain the assurance that God is with us. This is hard for most of us. We want to go, we want to move, and we want things to happen now. There is something so valuable in accessing what it feels like to wait.
Luckily we have some aids to help us in this. Around my house growing up and even now, there are advent calendars around. Each day a door opens and it helps us to see our waiting in action. In church, we have the advent wreaths to keep us in anticipation. I love that the church I serve now rolls out Advent decorations each week to add to the last week. This helps me anticipate what is to come. And luckily we have each other who can remind the other…just wait and see. Wait and see what will happen.
Today I promise to slow down to heal if you promise to find a way to wait at some point today for something to happen in the world. Just wait and see what happens.
Prayer: Creator God, when you call us to wait we are anxious to hurry to the next step. In our chaos we might miss what is waiting for us in the meantime. Help us to pause today to heal, to anticipate, to transform. Amen.
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