Listen! I am here at the door, knocking. If you happen to hear my voice and open the door, I will enter and have a meal with you, and you with me.
Revelation 3:20
Advent – An arrival or coming, especially one which is awaited.
Abba,
Bonhoeffer notes in his writings that Advent is about waiting. The Advent season IS about waiting, it is about looking forward to that which has been promised in the coming of Messiah. But he also correctly notes that this entire life is about waiting. Time, inside of creation, is about waiting for the coming day when the final salvation will become reality. The Advent of life is about waiting for the day when You make a new heaven, a new earth, when sin is fully and finally removed, and when the truest and deepest intimacy we have ever known with You will become a reality.
We hate waiting. I hate waiting. And yet…the waiting serves a purpose. Several probably, but the one that most immediately jumps to mind is that it serves the purpose of building the anticipation. And the greater the intensity of anticipation, the greater delight when the anticipated becomes reality. The more one eagerly looks forward to something, the longer one waits for it, the greater joy there is when one finally lays hold of it. SO, if nothing else, this time of waiting is building our anticipation so that when the final Advent arrives, our delight in it, IN YOU, will be unparalleled.
I tend to forget this benefit of waiting. I tend to begin complaining about it instead. I ought to see the waiting as You do…as a blessing and grace. Sure, its benefits are deferred. But that is that the point. Deferred pleasure knows a deeper delight for having had to wait to obtain it. This is a truth and reality that I seem to know little of having grown up in a culture that lauds instant gratification. Oh that I might repent of my fleshly demand to enjoy the pleasures I seek now and begin to delight in the pleasures of deferred enjoyment.
In this Advent season, Abba, remind me of this truth, renew in me a delight in waiting.
But also remind me that in the waiting, you are busy at work. You are refining, sanctifying, maturing, testing, proving, and strengthening. By the time we stand before You in the final Advent, we will be well ripped and muscled, lean and strong from the work you are doing in the period of Advent.
As weariness invades this life, give me sight to see beyond the waiting of this life so that I might behold the what you are making. Give me a joy to wait with joy and eager anticipation for the final culmination of that which you are preparing. Let me give thanks for the necessity of waiting so that the final revealing will be all the more stunning for it.
A Singular Passion 