Friday of the Second Week of Advent
Earlier this year, one of my children had to have a couple of minor surgeries - but those surgeries meant several visits to the surgeon. With each visit, we could count on the fact that we'd be waiting at least an hour - if not two - before seeing the doctor. The first visit, I was just annoyed and frustrated. I won't lie to you and say that over the next several visits I got used to waiting, exactly, or that I became the best patient person ever.
But I'd like to think I got a little bit better at waiting - and part of getting better was the fact that my daughter was never, EVER annoyed or impatient about waiting. She always found interesting things to do and see, and always wanted me to be a partner to her interests. So we found ourselves singing songs, playing clapping games, reading books, even (in one enormous patient waiting room) playing an impromptu hopscotch game.
All that waiting ended up being a boon to my relationship with my kid. I learned just to sit in the moment and be glad of that time.
When I think of the waiting we are called to do in Advent, I think of those days in the waiting rooms, how much more I could learn about waiting. Today's scriptures speak to us about how to wait wisely.
In today’s gospel lesson (Matthew 11:16-19) Jesus suggests that this generation of people is doing all the wrong things at the wrong times. “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we played the dirge for you and you did not mourn.” The people did not, apparently, know the right ways to respond – their signals were crossed.
The Old Testament lesson, by contrast, (Isaiah 48:17-19) tells us that if we follow God, we will be doing the right things and God will reward us bountifully: Isaiah uses images of boundless rivers and grains of sand to numerous to convey what God's rewards are like. Unlike the New Testament generation Jesus describes, we will know the right thing to do if we are following God. “Wisdom is vindicated,” Jesus says.
The trouble is, how do we become wise like the people in Isaiah? How do we know that we are following God and doing the right things at the right time? I have two thoughts about this. First, perhaps the scripture is calling us to realize our arrogance, to realize that we are not as smart as we think we are about what needs to be done, and need to practice a little humility. God may well be asking us to do something different than what we have done before. So as we wait for Jesus, perhaps we are being asked to reflect on the times and places where we have been (and are) a bit too sure of ourselves.
Second, I think the scripture is reminding us to pay attention to the present circumstances in which we find ourselves, rather than living too far into the future. The future is often very different than what we imagined, so living for whatever future we might imagine takes us down a false path.
Christmas will come, the Light of the World will be here, and we have hope in that. But at this present moment, we are waiting, and there is something important about the waiting itself. In the very act of waiting, we create space in our lives for God to be with us. We are developing a relationship with God not too far from how I was developing a relationship with my daughter God is always with us now, where we are. If we are imagining the future too much, we will miss that God is with us right now. And so we will be foolish, because we’ll be looking for God where God is not.
Let us reflect on the ways that we might wait, well – and so be with God, because God is wherever we are now.
- Jana M. Bennett