In a nutshell, waiting is not fun. Then why, if Advent is the season of waiting, do I love it so much? I decided that it's because waiting is something I can relate to. Very intimately.
Waiting, like wandering, is the story of my life. It might as well be my middle name. Or you could just put an elipses: Devon...Parish. That's me. Just one dramatic pause after another. I've also varyingly phrased it as "eternal hunger" and "holy dissatisfaction". But if you boil it down, the essence is that I'm searching, hoping, and waiting for something more to bust into my life and into this world, bringing love and joy and peace and meaning.
What's great about Advent is that it models the painful waiting and expectation, but then, magically, it ends. There is resolution. Every year, four weeks after Advent begins, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day roll around. Baby Jesus is born, bringing love and joy and peace and meaning to our world. And though it is really only a beginning, we are reminded that the waiting is worth it. Just as daybreak follows the night and spring follows the winter, His kingdom comes. Hope does not disappoint.
One of the most poignant moments I've ever had was at "Lessons and Carols" my junior year of college. The service is a holiday tradition in which Bible verses pertaining to Advent are read aloud with Christmas carols sung or performed by a choir between each passage. That year, I did the first reading from Genesis, and then I sat in the front pew of the chapel as we read and sang the whole Bible story in an hour - from Creation to the trials of Israel to the desperate cries of the prophets to the answer to those cries in the person of Jesus. Suddenly it became very clear to me that this story was Truth. I could see that all the pains of my day to day life, all the doubts and anxieties, were wasted investments. The only bet worth taking was the one that said the promises of scripture would all come true. After sobbing in the front row for the entire service, I approached the Chaplain, red-faced and weary, hoping for a hug. "What happened?" she exclaimed, "Are you okay? You had me worried!" "I'm okay," I said, "I just had an epiphany, that's all." I'd been waiting for that for a long time.
This Advent, I'm learning another lesson: that epiphanies are rare. Even when the answers finally come, they don't usually come all at once. One period of waiting yields to another as promises are fulfilled in stages. This week, I finally got a job. After nine long months of applications and interviews, after trying desperately to listen to where God was calling me, a door has opened! Now I have a chance to start anew in what looks to be a better scenario for me from every angle. But there are still a lot of question marks. Where will I live? and with whom? How long will I stay? Will I like this job? Where will I dance and go to church, and who will my new friends be? How does this fit into the one true story that Advent tells?
As I dive into another dramatic pause, hoping impatiently as the direction of my life unfurls at the speed of chilled molasses, I will try to remember what those shepherds and wise men and scholars and rabbis must have been thinking when they heard that the Savior was born in Bethlehem: "Hallelujah! He has come at last! Our messiah is...a baby?! If he can't speak or walk or feed himself, how is he going to redeem our people??! I'm going to be dead by the time he gets around to building a kingdom!"
I guess it's only human to ask "What now?" the minute something good happens. I blame our Creator. In the words of the Psalmist, "I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits..."
Consult God’s instruction and the testimony of warning. If anyone does not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn. Distressed and hungry, they will roam through the land; when they are famished, they will become enraged and, looking upward, will curse their king and their God. Then they will look toward the earth and see only distress and darkness and fearful gloom, and they will be thrust into utter darkness. Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the nations, by the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan—The people walking in darkness have seen a great light... (Isaiah 8:20-9:2)
