Advent, and the Work of the Long Wait

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Hi Friends,

I have carried the above image in my mind the last several weeks of travel and moving about. A lot has been accomplished as I have worked to unpack many boxes in the house where we will eventually live full-time. A lot remains to be done, but it feels less overwhelming, for which I am immensely grateful. In the midst of it all, we attended and celebrated the Bat Mitzvahs of two young teenage girls; hosted a full house over the long Thanksgiving weekend; spent several days caring for a grandson too young for the selected daycare of our son and his wife; and listened to and wrestled with and thought and prayed over an undesired work situation facing one of our daughters and her family, who will most likely be moving to another part of the country sooner than they (or we) could have anticipated.

And here we are, headed into the longest, darkest night of the year and less than a week away from Christmas Day itself. There is something about Advent – that dark-yet-edged-with-light season of waiting before Christmas – that seems to always come like this: in a rush. It’s a season full of contradiction that moves along culturally at such warp speed we have trouble discerning what is true and what is make believe, and we are too pressed for time to find out. We hurry up to wait. And because waiting is such slow, hard work, we wonder if it is worth it. What’s the point?

We hurry up to wait through so much of our lives. We wait for people we know to change, for the world in which we live to change. We wait for personal change. (Think New Year’s resolutions, so quickly abandoned!) That other shoe – we hold our breath and wait for it to drop. But we also wait expectantly, for what we hope will be good: friendship, love, family, rewarding work, health, community. We wait for children to be born and for children to come home. We wait to be known, to be understood, to be loved for who we are. We wait for the grace to simply be, to stop performing.

I took the above photo before I headed South for a few months, before ice and snow closed trails along one of my favorite series of waterfalls in the Northeast. It’s a remarkable scene: several almost perfectly shaped bowls on the bottom of a creek bed that catapults water over multiple falls. Some of the round basins are located directly under a fall, some are not. Some contain visible stones and pieces of debris, some do not. They all raise questions: How did this happen? How long did it take?

My husband, a biologist, explained the science to me. At some point in time, a stone (or stones) became trapped in small depressions in the creek bed. As water rushed and pounded over the waterfalls and down the creek – especially high volumes of water caused by thawing ice and snow during spring runoff – the trapped stone(s) began to move until gradually the space around them widened. Over eons, the stone(s) ground away the sides of the depression, shaping them into various circular forms.

All that pressure, all that time, all that tumult created something uniquely beautiful.

I see a link between those magnificent clear-water holes and Advent, this season of will-we-ever-make-it-to-Christmas. Will Jesus really make all things new? All human endeavors, all broken relationships, all suffering, illness, envy and pride? Will every one of my crooked-road solutions to personal difficulties be made straight?

We in the northern hemisphere wait during Advent for daylight to begin to lengthen, though until December 22 each day only grows shorter. We wait for sunlight to peek through gray horizons, for warmth and ensuing growth to return. We wait for Spring. But first we must endure the long, weighted pressure of Winter; clawing our way out of it can be so gradual we doubt it will ever end. We all know waiting is part of the human condition, but that does not make it easier, or less scary, or less infuriating, or less painful. True waiting requires inner resources that can be as ephemeral as winter light.

I grew up in a time when young Christians were told to “Go out and change the world. Change the marketplace, the political landscape, your communities.” I sometimes wonder what kind of world we would be living in now if we had been commissioned to not so much change the world for God, as allow God to change us for the world. Being molded and shaped into people usable by God is long-goal work, the ultimate slow process. We are impatient for the stones that swirl in the creek beds of our hearts to be removed, for the pressure and grinding and reshaping to be done so we can get on with being who we want to be and think we should be. God, on the other hand, has all the time in the world (literally). He is not bound by our timelines or our personal desires or goals.

All we can do is wait for the swirling stones to change us, make something beautiful of us. I am more and more convinced that if we let it, waiting will change us. Some of the sharp edges of our lives will be rounded; it softens and humanizes us to recognize the work is God’s to do, not ours. We may never understand why we must wait so long, but we can begin to learn to trust and rest in the process. I don’t have to push so hard. I don’t have to understand it. I can’t control it. I can be changed by it.

As I have seen God at work in me, as painful as it sometimes is, a new sense of gratitude has begun to creep in, which in turn has fostered a smattering of courage, acceptance (especially of His work in the lives of others) and hope. It’s a circle, and it is doing its work.

I spoke with a woman today whose son just entered a long-term addiction recovery program. She is hopeful, but she is also realistic about the long, exceedingly difficult road ahead. There are no promises. Then later in the afternoon, I talked with a neighbor whose friend is slowly succumbing to the ravages of ALS. To even consider what that sick man is experiencing is heartbreaking. I pray he can claim a small piece of hope as his own. I pray God will reach down to that man with care and tenderness, that he will know if for himself.

This, to me, is the real meaning of Advent. Learning to trust that the long hours of darkness will lead to something, that the long years of being shaped by waiting will, in the end, matter. That the person God intends us to be is beautiful, beloved.

The Babe who came to us on Christmas Day was born in poverty. He was misunderstood and considered suspect from the time of his birth, yet he completely yielded to the work God the Father called Him to. He waited – and rested in that calling. He who was God was shaped by God, for God’s work. His waiting in peace makes it possible for me to experience moments of waiting in peace. His gentleness as He waited for God’s work in the lives of others makes it more possible for me to wait, and not push. His refrain from self-exultation and putting himself forward encourages me to sometimes just give it up, to be quiet with my solutions, my thoughts and my attempts at problem solving. I don’t do any of this well, and none of it is easy, but the work of God in me is ongoing – the stones are still shaping me. I am not called to change the world. I am called to let Him change me for the sake of the world I inhabit.

Merry Christmas.