December 23, 2019
God doesn’t grow tired of hearing our petitions. We are the ones that grow tired of petitioning. Keep praying. God hasn’t stopped listening.
Waiting
Author Unknown
December 21, 2019
Sometimes it seems as though we spend our lives waiting. Daydreaming about an upcoming vacation, worrying over a medical test, preparing for the birth of grandchild-our days are filled with anticipation and anxiety over what the future holds. As Christians, we too spend our lives waiting. But we are waiting for something much bigger than a trip, bigger even than retirement or a wedding: We are waiting for the return of Jesus in glory. Advent heightens this sense of waiting, because it marks not only our anticipation of Jesus’ final coming, but also our remembrance of his arrival into our world more than 2,000 years ago.
Sally McClung
I hope someday that God can explain some of the delays to us……but I’m convinced that one of the things He is teaching me, and all of us, is perseverance. In this day and age of everything being “instant” – we can forget what it means to persevere. Perseverance is one of the ways of God that are found all through the Word. It’s an important character trait for us to have in our walk with the Lord. Being willing to persevere in prayer, and in other ways, is often a test for us.
Paul Manwaring
In the gaps, waits, and journeys of life, especially the traumatic and tragic ones, there will likely be many things, which we do not understand. We have been given permission to live with mystery, and to know that faithfulness is always rewarded, even if we do not reach what we believed was our destination. After all, the father of our faith, Abraham, appears to be given that title more as a result of the journey than an arrival at a destination.
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Michelle Blake
One of the essential paradoxes of Advent: that while we wait for God, we are with God all along ,that while we need to be reassured of God’s arrival, or the arrival of our homecoming, we are already at home. While we wait, we have to trust, to have faith, but it is God’s grace that gives us that faith. As with all spiritual knowledge, two things are true, and equally true, at once. The mind can’t grasp paradox; it is the knowledge of the soul.
Jan L. Richardson
The season of Advent means there is something on the horizon the likes of which we have never seen before… .What is possible is to not see it, to miss it, to turn just as it brushes past you. And you begin to grasp what it was you missed, like Moses in the cleft of the rock, watching God’s [back] fade in the distance. So stay. Sit. Linger. Tarry. Ponder. Wait. Behold. Wonder. There will be time enough for running. For rushing. For worrying. For pushing. For now, stay. Wait. Something is on the horizon.
Katherine Walden
We focus on Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday, but we forget to pause in the stillness of the days between. Find time today to be present in that place of waiting. There is treasure to be found in the sacred peace that comes as you breathe in that place of quiet surrender. Don’t rush through the space called “Between.”
Burton Hills
For many of us, sadly, the spirit of Christmas is “hurry”. And yet, eventually, the hour comes when the rushing ends and the race against the calendar mercifully comes to a close. It is only now perhaps that we truly recognize the spirit of Christmas. It is not a matter of days or weeks, but of centuries… since that holy night in Bethlehem. Regarded in this manner, the pre-Christmas rush may do us greater service than we realize. With all its temporal confusion, it may just help us to see that by contrast, Christmas itself is eternal.
Katherine Walden
Waiting at a bus stop on one end of a major curve in the road is a great analogy for what hope and faith are all about. You know the bus is coming, your bus schedule says it will, and yet you cannot see its arrival until it makes that final bend toward you.
As we anticipate the joyful celebration of Christ’s birth in just a few days, let’s stand on His promises. We may not yet see them before our eyes, but His word is Truth, and the fulfilment of those promises are just around the bend.
Shauna Niequis
I believe deeply that God does his best work in our lives during times of great heartbreak and loss, and I believe that much of that rich work is done by the hands of people who love us, who dive into the wreckage with us and show us who God is, over and over and over. There are years when the Christmas spirit is hard to come by, and it’s in those seasons when I’m so thankful for Advent. Consider it a less flashy but still very beautiful way of being present to this season. Give up for a while your false and failing attempts at merriment, and thank God for thin places, and for Advent, for a season that understands longing and loneliness and long nights. Let yourself fall open to Advent, to anticipation, to the belief that what is empty will be filled, what is broken will be repaired, and what is lost can always be found, no matter how many times it’s been lost.