As we approach Christmas this year, I’ve thought a lot about waiting.  After all, Advent is all about waiting.  The Jews eagerly anticipated their Messiah for hundreds of years…until one day, Christ was born.  As believers, we too now eagerly anticipate the return of our Lord.  We keep waiting until one day, when he will indeed return.  Waiting on major things in our life though, that is hard. 

Waiting for a job when you don’t think you can pay the bills another month without one.  Waiting for a marriage to get easier or to be restored.  Waiting for a positive pregnancy test when all of your friends are welcoming their second and third children.  Waiting for a spouse when you’re starting to wonder if you may be single forever.  Waiting to see if you’re healthy, or if you’ll hear the dreaded diagnosis of cancer.  These things are all so very hard to wait for. 

Waiting and being still when your life doesn’t look like you thought it would; this is when faith kicks in.  This is when my conversations with God start to look brutally honest.  Wrestling with God when I desperately want things in my life to be different; this is when waiting is hard.  I have lost a spouse and I have lost a second marriage.  Being a single mom twice isn’t exactly where I wanted to be, but yet here I am.   People have different views of waiting.  Dr. Seuss calls the waiting place a useless place.  However, God has used waiting in the lives of his people for a very long time. 

Joseph is the first example that comes to mind when I think of waiting.  He waited in slavery for years, but God didn’t deliver him from slavery to royalty.  No.  He delivered him from slavery to prison.  I’m sure that didn’t feel like deliverance to Joseph.  He languished for years in prison, and the cupbearer could have remembered him immediately, but he didn’t.  No, he wouldn’t remember Joseph for a few more years.  Why did Joseph have to wait so long to see God’s vision to him fulfilled?  I won’t pretend to know all the reasons, but I do believe he needed to teach Joseph some valuable lessons that he would not have learned if he’d stayed as the favorite child in his father’s house.  He also would not have been in a position to save his family if he’d stayed at home.  Sometimes, there’s a much bigger plan in motion than just the pain of our here and now. This was certainly true in the life of Joseph. 

David is another example of waiting.  What happened once he was anointed king?  He didn’t waltz into a coronation ceremony.  He went back to tending sheep.  He would spend years commanding an army and trying to keep from being murdered by the current king, Saul.  He had to wait for years to become king.  Why?  Again, I won’t pretend to know God’s plan for him, but I suspect it had something to do with maturing him into the man God needed him to be in order to faithfully rule his people. 

I have recently thought a lot about the Israelites.  God didn’t deliver them from slavery straight into the promised land.  He delivered them…into the wilderness.  This is starting to follow a pattern.  God tested their faith, and they failed miserably.  The result was years of wandering in the desert until the next generation could enter the promised land. 

Can you identify with these stories?  Does it feel like you’ve been delivered from one misery only to now be wandering in the wilderness?  My counselor once told me that instead of asking God why, ask him what he wants to show you in this.  While we are in the wilderness, God is trying to teach us some things before he lets us enter the promised land.  We have a choice: learn the lessons and be found faithful to enter the promised land or wander endlessly and needlessly in the wilderness as we grumble.  This is easier said than done.  When you look around your life and all you see is broken promises and lost dreams, it starts to get harder and harder to trust God.  Sweet friends, if I could sit down with you and some coffee (because with a sleepless toddler, I always need coffee!), I want to tell you that my pastor recently preached in a sermon that Satan devours people by convincing them that God is not good.  If Satan can keep your eyes on your bleak circumstances, he knows he can drown you.  If we keep our eyes on Christ, the author and perfecter of our faith, no difficulty or hardship or loss or betrayal can take us down.  We may be bruised and battered, but we will not be destroyed.  Our Father won’t allow it because all of those difficulties in your life?  All of those trials and battles and hurts?  Believe that God will use them for your good and His glory.  They are never for nothing. 

This Advent season, may we remember that perhaps when we’re hurting or struggling, our hearts are better tuned to experience the hope of Christmas more than ever.  The hope of Christmas didn’t come to the palace or the temple; it came to the lowly shepherds in the fields, faithfully tending their flocks at night.  Christ didn’t come to the wealthy or the royal or those who thought they had it all together; he came to those who needed Him most, and that’s where our hope is this Christmas and every other day of our lives. 

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to grant to those who mourn in Zion – to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified.”