It’s been a long time since Pat and I had little
children around our house at Christmas time. At our age, we tend to forget how
difficult it is for them to wait until Christmas morning. Beginning before
Thanksgiving Day, images of Santa Claus and presents begin to appear everywhere
these young eyes look. The decorations heighten their anxiety as they begin to
appear in stores, on lampposts, on the neighbor’s house. Santa Claus seems to
be here, there and everywhere…but telling a three year old…there are only three
more weeks until the big day…might as well tell him there are three more years.
There’s an art to waiting. An art that makes it
worth the wait. Children get it. We have forgotten it.
Psychologists have long
recognized the importance of waiting, what they call delayed gratification. Years
ago, psychologist Walter Mischel conducted an experiment on a group of
four-year olds. Each child was offered a marshmallow, and was told that they
could have it now, or if they could wait several minutes, they could have two.
Some children were unable to wait and they grabbed a marshmallow, giving up an
opportunity to have two. Others waited and were rewarded.
As the children became
adults, the researcher discovered that those who didn’t eat their marshmallows
that day were generally more self-motivated, successful in school and
considered emotionally intelligent. On the other hand those who simply couldn’t
wait generally had low self-esteem and had suffered in school, branded by both
their teachers and parents as being stubborn, envious and easily frustrated.
The wait matters. But
it’s more than delaying our gratification. It’s also about the joy of
anticipation, the sensation of our participation in the path, the journey from
now until the promise is rewarded. Its about knowing there is something worth
waiting for.
Advent is about waiting…knowing
that we are not waiting simply for a second marshmallow but for the day
Christians set aside to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Advent is a spiritual season of preparation before Christmas
celebrated by many Christians. In Western Christianity, the season of Advent
begins on the fourth Sunday prior to Christmas Day, or the Sunday closest to
November 30, and lasts through Christmas Eve.
Advent is the wait. The
wait can be itself the goal, using it deliberately as a time of contemplation,
of spiritual growth. It is simpler perhaps to think of what the wait means to a
child. We help our children through their long wait by taking them to see the
lights, the Christmas Tree at the Capitol, watching “Charlie Brown’s Christmas”
or reading “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and giving them a role in the
Christmas play. We use Advent calendars to teach the importance of the wait.
But what about us
adults? How do we regain the spirit of the wait, the joy of anticipation? After
we leave our childhood and become adults, it’s easy to lose the spirit as we
become overwhelmed with all the culture says must be done before Christmas Day.
This year I encourage
you to think about the wait. What does waiting mean to those who know that at
the end of the wait is a day we set aside to celebrate the birth of Jesus? Let
me suggest it means thinking about the great significance “waiting” has in all
of our lives. Waiting for the birth of Jesus, for the promise of peace and justice
and joy can mean different things to different people.
For example…as Christmas
approaches this year…we are awaiting the birth of another grandchild. Before or
very soon after Christmas Day…perhaps on that day…little August McDaniel
Jacobsen will join the family.
But while we wait for
that joyous day…our brother-in-law Bob and Pat’s sister Margaret are also
waiting…waiting to learn whether chemotherapy will shrink the tumor in Bob’s
throat to a size that will permit doctors to save his life with surgery.
Waiting for joyous news, all of us and preparing spiritually.
Advent is a time for us
to reflect theologically on where God is during those times in our lives when
we wait. It’s a time to think even more deeply about the times in the lives of
others…those who experience the injustices of life that the birth of Jesus is
intended to overcome and our Christian role in ending the injustices.
It is a time when we
prepare for the birth of him whom the prophet Isaiah calls “the Prince of
Peace.” So we wait for the peace God promised through the Christ child even as
some of our neighbors wait to be deployed to fight a war that has lasted more
than a decade and others await the return of loved ones from that war. Waiting.
There are those who are
waiting the joyous day of their marriage while others are waiting to see
whether a troubled marriage can be saved. Still others are waiting for a time
when the law will permit them to marry. Waiting for justice.
Where is God during the
wait? Where is God as families await the return of a loved one from
prison…where is God as families await the day when an addicted member of the
family finds recovery or a homeless family member a home…or one denied adequate
healthcare finds it? Where is God when hungry children await a meal or when
neglected children languish in foster care or juvenile detention facilities?
Where is God when elderly loved-ones suffer the natural consequences of growing
old in bodies and minds that have betrayed them long before they are called
home?
God is in the wait…but the wait is not a time of
idleness, not a time of passive hope…the wait is in the words of the voice of one
crying out in the wilderness. A culture that celebrates the birth of Christ
without using the times we wait as a time of preparation is indeed the
wilderness…and through it all, as we wait, hear the words of the prophet
Isaiah. ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley
shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked
shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see
the salvation of God.”
During this time of Advent…think of one thing you
can do to be a voice crying out in that wilderness. Instead of waiting for a
savior how about being one? What can you do to prepare the way of the Lord…to make
the path straight?
As you
prepare to receive gifts, give God one very special gift just from you…a gift
that prepares the way of the Lord in a unique, special way…unique to your
calling and calling. Start where you are, where God has placed you as God has
all of us…in the path of injustice and need…injustices we can help resolve,
needs we can help to meet.
Let this gift be something personal
that no one else needs to know about, and let it be a sacrifice using the
unique and special gifts God gave you so that you can give back.
Imagine a world so prepared for the
birth of Jesus that “every valley would already be filled, and every
mountain and hill already made low, the crooked made straight, and the rough ways
made smooth; and all of us prepared to see the salvation of God at the birth of
our Lord.”
And this is my prayer, Paul wrote in Philippians 1:1-11…that your love may
overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine
what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless,
having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ
for the glory and praise of God.
That would be an Advent worth the wait. AMEN
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