Waiting.

Advent is a time for waiting. 

I know these days it feels much more like a warm-up - twinkly lights and mulled wine as soon as we can get our hands on them, all building up to a crescendo on the 25th and then two weeks of sleep before cracking back on with revision.

It’s a season for joy, absolutely - a season to give thanks for enduring goodness and grace. And that is coming, thank-you Jesus! It’s on its way. 

But let’s not rush there in a hurry. We can’t get to the party without the preparation.

Advent is a time for getting ready.

For acknowledging that things aren’t really as they should be just now.

A time where even amidst all that’s bright and shiny and promises much, we admit that, right here and now, it’s actually getting a little darker and a little colder.

It’s ok - good, in fact - to do your coat up a little tighter, huddle in and take some time to sit in it midst of it all.

Not in some melancholic pity-party, but in honour of that most elusive of things: reality.

Because the reality is, the world is a tricky place. How much more so these last couple of years?

We can deny the darkness if we want. Drown it out with Secret Santas and end-of-year socials.

Or we could it acknowledge it… hopefully.

For it is the people in great darkness for whom the light is promised.

Four hundred years of dark silence sat between God’s words in Malachi and his next appearance in the story. 

Four centuries of a remnant watching and waiting, huddled around dim candle lights, waiting on a promise.  

What, then, is four weeks?

And what if four weeks of a little more watching and waiting could change us?

For it is in the moments of weakness that we learn to look for true Strength. 

What if in staring the ‘not yet’ of the kingdom square in the face, we could make a little more room for the ‘now’?

Those moments when the Light breaks in. When the siege is over and the rightful King returns! 

Look around you. At your friends, at your uni, where you live.

Examine the systems and structures of society, the wisdom of world that, for something so pleased with itself, is looking more foolish by the day:

Can you take your fingers out of your ears and uncover your eyes to see what is really there? Can you sit in the discomfort long enough for it to move you?

And can you do the same for yourself? Can you make friends with the shadowy recesses that you’ve tucked into a darkened corner of your own heart? 

And this advent, doing all that, can you dwell amongst it all and watch and wait and pray: 

“Come, Lord Jesus.” 

Because He will.

He has. He is. 

He is no stranger to showing up in despised and overlooked places, but even the stable needed a manger - waiting in advance to receive the gift. 

Jesus isn’t just the reason for the season. He is the answer to the longing in our hearts, the groans of creation.

It’s not fully here yet, but the greatest gift of all is coming.

Hope is on its way. 

So, this advent, watch and wait and pray:

“Come, Lord Jesus. 

Let Your light shine out of the darkness.”