I don’t like to wait. I don’t like queues, traffic jams, crowded airports, slow mail, long engagements, crawling Internet speed, hold music, lengthy sermons (only kidding!) and long delays. You could say patience is a virtue that still has some growing to do in me. But patience is more than a virtue; it is an attribute of the Fruit of the Spirit. And Advent, this season leading up to Christmas, is all about patience - active waiting.
Six hundred years before Jesus was born, Israel’s longing for a liberating Messiah became a desperate ache as it struggled under Babylonian, and then Persian exile. By the time of Caesar Augustus expectation was higher still. Which makes it all the more ironic and sad that most did not recognize, and in fact rejected, the long awaited Messiah when he did come. Waiting can sharpen, or it can distort, our expectations.
Since Jesus ascended to heaven (Acts 2) we have been have been waiting for his return. The second Advent precedes the Second Coming. In this time of waiting we who follow Jesus are called to do as John the Baptist did 2000 years ago; prepare the way for his coming. Every act of service, word of encouragement, testimony of faith and prayer offered in the name of Jesus, in some way witnesses to our belief not only that Jesus is alive, but that one day he will come again to judge the living and the dead, make all things new and unite heaven and earth. So while we wait, we wait with joy-filled expectation and urgency with the prayer ever on our lips, ‘Come Lord Jesus!’