Advent...coming and waiting

        All righty--who's ready for Christmas?!  Because ready or not, here it comes.  And I say, praise God!
        Sure, we're all sad to bid Thanksgiving goodbye.  What a gloriously happy, uncomplicated, and important holiday.  We get to spend time purposefully being thankful--thankful to the Lord for His relentless goodness in our lives and in our world.  I truly believe that no habit is more transformational than gratitude.  Choosing gratitude and expressing it in thankfulness.
       But while we need to continually hold on to that crucial habit of gratitude, it's also time to move our thankfulness into a new arena, a new time: Advent.   Advent is a time of waiting--waiting and preparing for the coming of Christ.
        The word Advent comes from the Latin adventus, which means "coming."  So in Advent we proclaim the coming of Jesus in two ways--first in celebrating Christ's coming as the long, long-awaited Messiah, and second in anticipating Christ's return as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
        Even as we wait, we prepare.  And even as we wait and prepare, we celebrate.  After all the long years of waiting in the Old Testament, God sent His Son, the Lord Jesus, to save His people.  No wonder we can celebrate that the Messiah has come!  But we also still wait for His second coming when all things will be made right, and Jesus will reign as our perfect, glorious King of Kings.
       God had first promised the coming Messiah way, way back in Genesis 3:15 when God Himself prophesied that One would come who would "crush [the] head" of satan and defeat evil.  But it would be thousands of years, while the Jews waited and waited, before the angel would come to Mary to tell her of the child she would bear--this long promised Messiah was finally coming!
      We cannot imagine how long, how arduous, how difficult all those years of waiting and wondering must have been for God's people.  Indeed, the four hundred years right before Jesus' coming, no prophets whatsoever were sent by God, and thus those dark years are often referred to as the "silent years."  Had the Lord forgotten His people?  Had He finally determined to reject them forever?  It seemed the promised Messiah would not be coming....
       ...and then Jesus came.  In the fullness of time, at just the right moment in God's calendar, Jesus came.  God's timing may not be our timing...indeed, it almost never is, is it?  But His timing, His plans, His ways are always, always, always "good, pleasing, and perfect." (Rom.12:2)  
       Tim Keller writes, "God may take His time, but He keeps His Word...You cannot judge God by your calendar. God may appear to be slow, but He never forgets His promises.  He may seem to be working very slowly or even to be forgetting His promises, but when His promises come true (and they will come true), they always burst the banks of what you imagined."  Amen!
       So if you're waiting on something right now, well, you're in mighty good company.  Welcome to the human race, for each of us are always waiting on something.  In your hard or lonely or frightening waiting, remember adventus--"coming."  At just the right time, at the darkest and most desperate moment, God came as an infant Savior...and He's coming again as a glorious Sovereign.
     We can wait just a little bit longer...but in our waiting, we remember.  In our waiting, we trust.  In our waiting, we prepare.  And in our waiting, we even celebrate...for the King has come and is coming again.
      Thank You, Lord, for Advent.  Thank You for coming.  Thank You for the glorious, unshakable, and certain promise that You are coming again.  And thank You that as we wait, You are with us.
     To God be the glory.