Dear Friends,

“O come, o come, Emmanuel”
“Come, Thou long-expected Jesus”
“The world in solemn stillness lay to hear the angel’s sing.”
“Long lay the world in sin and error pining.”
Waiting, as you can read and sing, is a frequent theme of Christmas carols.

Waiting is an attitude of the season. We wait to see friends and loved ones. We wait in lines. We wait to give special gifts and to open them. We wait up for someone to come home. We wait to make special recipes and wear certain clothes.

But the world, having gotten it all wrong at the beginning, waited to see if it could ever get it right.

Bigger is always better is the world’s way. Empire followed upon empire, each more dominant and cruel than its predecessor until Rome ruled the known world from Asia to the North Sea.

Many women were dispossessed in Palestine by easy divorce laws leaving them with their children destitute. Rome’s harsh tax schemes and the corruption it tolerated from local figurehead officials like Herod left its occupied territories impoverished.

Spiritual fervor had waned into political solutions and disappointment and despair were the result. It had been 400 years since Israel had heard from a prophet.

Waiting requires patience which means the bearing of provocation, annoyance, misfortune, or pain, without complaint, loss of temper, irritation, or the like. Patience is a fruit of the Holy Spirit (Gal 5:22). It is not something one can manufacture.

I would like to be patient, but, try as I might, the words “annoyed,” “loss of temper,” and “irritation” describe me much more than “patience.” I don’t think that gritting my teeth, clinching my fists, and affecting nonchalance represents being patient. Mostly it causes tension to those around me.

The patience that I do experience in increasing measure comes from trusting Jesus to be my life. Also, I encounter situations and problems that offer me no choice but to wait, no matter how much I want to move on. I can say from hard lessons that patience is learned as in no other way when I am out of control and helpless to effect change with my own thought and effort.

There is a moment in the forest before the dawn when the moon sets, the owls go silent and the songbirds have not yet wakened to the day. One wonders in the dark stillness, what will happen next?

The dawn can neither be stopped nor rushed. It will happen. Learning to accept this truth is the secret to enduring the night.

I think persons of faith in Judea in the year of Christ’s birth had come to that acceptance. The priest Zechariah, father of John the Baptist, sang this prophecy of the soon coming Messiah¬-
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By the tender mercy of our God
the dawn from on high will break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness
and in the shadow of death.
to guide our feet into the way of peace.
Luke 1:78-79
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A people immobilized by darkness, with death their only prospect of change, came to know that created lights and lights of human manufacture would only deceive and fade, leaving them in the darkness even blinder than they were before. Their only hope was for a Savior — a light that is life itself; “the true light, that enlightens everyone” (John 1:4-9). So they waited in the dark for that true light until he came.

Jesus is that light. He said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life” (John 8:12). He came for them and he came for us. His light shone then and it shines now.

There is still waiting to be done – waiting in winter quiet for Jesus to become fully the Lord and Light of our lives; waiting for the gift of patience to be full and finally ours; waiting for the wounds to heal that were inflicted on us in the rebellion against God and his peace that still surges through the earth; waiting in readiness for the Second Advent when he will return to take us home for eternity.
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“Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.”
(Adolphe Adam)

Amen!
“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Ps. 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

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