Waiting for Love

Advent is a time of waiting.  The "Christmas season" is full of activity: lists to be completed, events to be attended, chores to be accomplished.  Christmas is hustle and bustle, perpetual motion slowed only by the arrival of the day itself, and even then only for a moment.  It's loud and busy and outward.  Advent, however, is different.  It's patient.  It's expectant.  It's inward.

Advent and Christmas don't need to be seen as an "either/or" proposition.  Advent can happen right in the middle of the craziness of Christmas, because as outward as Christmas is, Advent is really an inward attitude of the heart.  It's an expectant waiting and hope that God will come among His people.  It's having eyes that are wide open and ready to see Him.  Advent is not helped by our full to-do lists, but neither is it negated by them.  We can't check "expectant waiting" off our chore list; but it requires intentionality all the same.  Advent is not an event to be observed and completed, although calendars will be opened and church services attended whether our hearts are engaged or not.  In fact, the heart of Advent is one that doesn't expire at the end of a season, but rather, it's a attitude that remains year-round, simply to be refocused during this season of waiting each year.

In Luke's gospel, a cast of characters is listed: Zechariah, Elizabeth, Mary, Joseph, Simeon, Anna... All of them were waiting.  They are representative of a remnant of Israel that was still waiting in faith that someday God would move.  It's important to note that not all of the nation waited.  Many had given up hope--at least real hope--and were simply going through the motions of worship in the temple.  But a few, represented by these characters in the opening chapters of Luke's gospel, faithfully waited on God to move among His people.  These hearts became the stage on which the drama of God's redemptive plan would unfold.  In the "fullness of time," Paul says... The drama began first in the hearts and then in the lives of those who waited.

Often lost at the end of one of Paul's most beloved chapters, 1 Corinthians 13, is this statement: "There are three things that will endure--faith, hope and love--and the greatest of these is love." (1 Cor. 13:13, NLT)  Faith: the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen, even though we can't yet see them. (Hebrews 11:1)  Hope: a yearning, expectation, and desire for something to happen.  Both of these are the raw materials of Advent.  They are virtually bursting out of the early chapters of Luke's gospel, and they are what you and I are called to in the attitude of Advent.  Waiting for the promise to be fulfilled.

How did they wait?  Henri Nouwen makes the observation that Mary went to Elizabeth and they waited together.  Advent is not an attitude that we develop only in solitude, but one that we share with others and encourage through community.  We together remember the promises of God, the reality that's far greater than what we see with our eyes.  We encourage one another to have faith.  To remain in hope.  We remind one another that God is coming and that we are to wait on Him with eager expectation.

And the greatest of these is love.

Why?  Because we wait with expectation for a day when faith will no longer be necessary--all that we long for will be seen with our eyes and experienced with all of our senses.  We wait for the moment when there's nothing left to hope for because all of our hopes are fulfilled in His Kingdom reign.  What, then, will be left?  Simply love.  Love that was embodied in the baby in Bethlehem.  The eternal God, come among His people.  Justice and righteousness kissing at the manger.  The promise of Jesus is that He will come again, and all that is wrong will completely be made right.  The Kingdom that is now in part will be in full.  Every tear will be wiped away.  There will be no need for sun or moon, for He will be our Light.

All that will remain is love.  And so, we wait.