Why We Wait

Advent is a season of waiting. As Christians, waiting is an important part of our experience of God’s purposes for us and for the world. It is essential, though, as we learn to wait, that we understand what we are waiting for, why we are waiting, and how we wait.

We are waiting for nothing less than the renewal of all things. We long for God’s image-bearing humans to be reconciled to the One who created them. We long for God’s image-bearing humans to be reconciled to one another. And we long for the restoration of all God’s creation – planets and stars, oceans and animals – to God’s gracious rule.

Why are we waiting? We learn in scripture that the breakdown of human souls, human relationships, and the created order so evident in our world today is rooted in rebellion against God and God’s intention for us. This rebellion, which the Bible calls sin, separates us from God, from one another, and from a proper relationship to God’s non-human creation.

The Bible tells the story of God’s loving and gracious overtures to human beings – the call of Abraham, the deliverance of the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt, the gift of the Law at Sinai, the Davidic line of kings over Israel and Judah, and the prophets in the Old Testament, all culminating in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It is through Jesus’ sacrificial, compassionate ministry of forgiveness, healing, and reconciliation that we experience his act of love in his death on the cross as, to use Karl Barth’s memorable phrase, God’s final “Yes!” to our “No!” On the cross Jesus atoned for our sins, opening the way of forgiveness, healing, and reconciliation to all people.

If, then, we are waiting for the renewal of all things, and we are waiting because human sin has separated all of creation from God’s perfect intention, then in light of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, we can wait in expectant hope that he is, indeed, in the process of “making all things new” (Revelation 21:5).

In his reflection on the nature of Christian waiting, Henri Nouwen wrote, “Waiting as a disciple of Jesus is not an empty waiting. It is a waiting with a promise in our hearts that makes already present what we are waiting for.” Throughout the New Testament, the “promise” is identified with the Holy Spirit. Jesus told his disciples to wait in Jerusalem until they received the “promise of the Father” (Luke 24:49, Acts 1:4). After the Holy Spirit descended on the believers on Pentecost, Peter told that crowd that what they were experiencing was the “promised Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:33). Paul wrote to the Galatians that Jews and Gentiles alike receive the “promised Holy Spirit” by faith (Galatians 3:14), and, in the letter to the Ephesians, we read that those who believe in Jesus are “sealed with the promised Holy Spirit” (Ephesians 1:13).

It is through the ministry of the Holy Spirit that we experience healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation, and it is through the ministry of the Holy Spirit that we are empowered to bear witness – through our words of love and truth and our acts of mercy and justice – to that for which we wait.

May this season be one in which we experience more and more the presence of that for which we are waiting: nothing less than the God’s gracious renewal of all things through Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Peace,

Chris