SLOW work of Advent? What’s that? It seems it was just yesterday I rooted through the closet for the Advent wreath that wasn’t there and filled the Advent calendar with chocolate kisses that were devoured posthaste by a toddler. Now all four Advent candles are lit, and I worry whether that last nub of purple, the first candle lit, will make it until Christmas.
Due to the “obligations” of Christmas, Advent often seems anything but slow, perhaps the quickest wait we ever endure. That’s why this sign outside a church I pass caught my eye:
How often has God failed to move according to my time-table? We wait on small changes – this minor illness to pass, the baby to get through this difficult phase, the busy time at work to pass.
And the big things – to find love and a spouse, this cross of infertility to be taken away, chronic health to improve, an opportunity to arise.
It hardly seems fair that we mere mortals must wait on the whim of an omniscient God that lives outside of time. The wait seems interminable, the answers slow to come or not to our liking.
Above all things, trust in the slow work of God.
We’re always looking ahead, but it’s as if our lens is clouded, looking ahead to a variety of things big and small, insignificant or important, but often not the things that matter most.
Advent is a precious time to slow down, to simply trust that God is in heaven, to be patient, to wait, to trust. Change, whether societal or internal – in the recesses of our hearts – is often slow.
While we wait on this or wait on that, it is often God who has ever-so-patiently waited on us.
Blessed are we, for unlike us, the One on whom we wait never fails and is never late. He comes to us and for us whether we are ready or not.
May Christ bless you with peace this Christmas.
How hard do you find waiting? Has this Advent whirred by or did you make time to ready yourself for the Christ-child’s birth?
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