I don't regularly bake cookies, why you ask, because they take too long. Cookies are laborious. You have to mix the cookie dough, parcel it out on the cookies sheets, wait while the first batch cooks, then cools, then repeat the whole process. My impatience with cookies is a picture of what has been true about me for much of my life.
I am impatient and I hate waiting, subsequently I haven't done well at waiting.
The world around me has been very accommodating. Microwave ovens, the internet, commuter lanes on the freeway, expedited shipping, email, order ahead on my Starbucks app have all tended well to my impatience.
It has been pain, disappointment and loss of control that have mentored the waiting place inside of me, stretching and growing my capacity to wait.
Thousands of years went by while God's people waited for the Messiah. Thousands of years, seriously, we have very little appreciation for the magnitude of that waiting. As I stood near the western wall of the temple in Jerusalem, the wailing wall, I quietly watched the Jews gathered there, waiting. They continue to carry the ache of hope, faithfully and passionately. It was stunning and heart wrenching at the same time as I pondered my own lack of awe and reverence at times for the goodness I know because the one they wait for has already come, and yet I still feel like I am waiting for Him.
“Advent is about waiting and the space can open up inside of us when we have to wait.”
When we cannot find a way to gratify our longings or aching for something the space to consider whether we really want it opens it. It is curious what begins to fall away and become unclenched in our hands while we wait, because your clenched fist tires and cramps up begging you to open it and let go.
The things that I tend to clench my fist around most often are relational. They are about tension I want relieved, brokenness that I want restored, conflict that I want resolved.
It's taken over 50 years for me to be able to say that slowly I am developing a waiting spirit, becoming a woman who can sit with my ache, my longing, my questions of God and wait. I entered into 2017 with some things my fingers were still holding onto, not totally clenching but definitely a firm grasp. As the months have gone by my fingers have opened and I have found that Jesus has come into those spaces, the tense, broken, conflict ridden places. The waiting did not bring what I thought was needed, but instead it brought a deepening of the felt presence of God. Some things have fallen away and others remain, but no longer are they clenched, they are held in the space that Jesus occupies inside of me and with His presence I can continue to wait and hope.
Waiting for Him to come is simply an ongoing part of my life. He has come, He is coming and He will come again.
How are you at waiting? Where do you ache for Him to come this Advent?