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Waiting for Christmas: Reflections for 2015

I really enjoy the Advent/Christmas season. It wasn't always this way. For a long time I hated it because I was working in retail and Christmas meant Christmas shoppers, which meant angry, demanding people for long hours (of course, I never gave a thought to the fact that I had become one of those angry people myself). But over the past few years, as I've really tried to focus on Advent--which is about waiting for God--I've seen my Christmas Spirit slowly return. This year has been my favorite Christmas season in a long time, and not just because I'm not working retail anymore. Well, it is exactly because of that, but there's more to it. Let me explain.

When I finished seminary I expected to go into a PhD program. That didn't happen right away, and so I had to wait. Then it didn't happen again. So I had to wait. And I slowly began to realize that what I was waiting for was probably not a PhD program anymore; God probably had something else in mind.

All told, I spent three years waiting for God--May 2012-2015--before God finally brought me here, to the little town of Enterprise, Oregon, to serve as a youth pastor. If you had told me three years ago that this is where I was going to end up, I would have laughed. Now that I'm here, I couldn't be more glad that God brought me to this place.

Looking back on those three years, however, I can tell you that waiting for God is not easy. Anyone who knew me during that time can tell you that I did not enjoy that period. I was in a rut. I was directionless. I felt useless. I was angry. I was ashamed. When that period of waiting finally ended, it lifted a burden off of my shoulders that was far heavier than I had realized. I can't tell you the relief and joy that I felt, simply at having a direction again.

Looking forward, I realize that I am still waiting on God for many things. I'm waiting for him to help me achieve certain life goals. I'm waiting for him to sanctify me and make me into the kind of man and pastor that he wants me to be. And I'm waiting for Christ to come again, to set all things right and fix this broken world. Waiting is hard. Waiting is frustrating. Waiting makes it so hard to keep the faith.

And yet, that is why we have Christmas! We tend to think that Advent exists to prepare for Christmas, but I think we could just as easily say that Christmas exists to answer the "question of Advent." See, Advent causes us to reflect on the many ways that we are waiting for God, and waiting always begs the question: will the thing we're waiting for ever come? The disciples thought that Jesus would return in their own lifetimes. That was 2,000 years ago. Every year, Advent poses us the question, will Christ ever really come? Or do we wait in vain?

This life is all about waiting; we are all waiting for God to do something. And when Christmas comes around, it serves as an answer to that great nagging doubt: will God deliver? Christmas reminds us that God has already delivered! The Jews waited for centuries for the messiah to come. Many of them lost the faith. And yet the Messiah came on one glorious night in Bethlehem. Because of that first coming, salvation has entered the world. The power of sin has begun to unwind. As Paul writes in Titus, "the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age...." The light has come, the promise has been kept, the world is being changed.

 And when we realize that God has already delivered in the birth of Jesus Christ, we can believe that he will deliver again. God will bring us what we wait for--even if, like in my case, it isn't what you thought you were waiting for. God delivers. Because he came once, we know that he will come again. Christmas doesn't mean we don't have to wait anymore. It means that we wait with hope. The passage from Titus continues, saying that because of Christ's first coming we are "...waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works." (Titus 2:11-14 ESV)

 Waiting is hard, but because of Christ we wait with hope. The ending is already written. The victory is already won. All that is left is for us to live it--which, of course, is far easier said than done. But that is why we repeat the cycle of Advent and Christmas every year: so that every year we are reminded that we wait for God to come, and that God will come.

 Merry Christmas, and may your waiting be hopeful!
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