Advent Waiting

Many of my people have been facing hard things this week. We witness death. We experience tragedy. We witness evil. We suffer. We hurt. We question nearly everything. 

This is the first week of Advent, and it almost seems wrong to light a candle and claim hope while the hard things continue to happen. 

Yet here I am, here we are, claiming hope. Declaring our confident expectation. In that expectation, we are still waiting. 

Is anyone else sick of waiting? Does anyone else want to say, "I don't think I can wait anymore. I don't think I can handle witnessing another death. My very being wants to hide from all of the injustice. I need it to end. Now."? 

That's how I've felt most of this week. I've been quietly whispering, "I can't wait anymore."

But here we are waiting. In Advent, we are invited to join the Israelites of the Old Testament who cried out to God for the Messiah. They waited. Not patiently, but confidently. They believed that God would fulfill his promise. 

We wait. We are invited to cry out, "Come, Lord Jesus!" with the Apostle John as he wrote in Revelation 22:20. We wait for his return, for his glorious reign, for his redemption of all things, for his justice to prevail. 

We wait. And the way I'm coping with this week, with all the hard things, is in writing. Not because I believe my writing is good, but because sometimes rough draft poetry is the only outlet for my angst in waiting. And sometimes, we need to experience the angst together. So I'm letting you in; I'm sharing this with you because I know that after hearing some of your stories this week, you're struggling in waiting too. Friends, we can wait together. We can hope together. 

Waiting
We cry out in pain
Waiting
Groaning as the things we hold dear end
Waiting
Weeping over death
Waiting
We believe we are defeated
    crushed
    hopeless
We are no longer waiting

We cry out
    convinced we have been made mute
    certain no one will care
We cry out to make it all real
    our pain is real

Can we keep waiting? 
The Christ will come again
We have been waiting
Waiting in death
    in sickness
    in grief
    in injustice
Must we keep waiting?

We cry out
    "Come quickly, Lord Jesus!"
Impatiently waiting
Longing 
Our very existence groaning
Clinging to that sure promise
He will return

Can we keep waiting?
When death returns to claim another body that was once groaning
    and waiting
When grief consumes
    draining the well of tears yet remaining
When we confess our disappointment
    in waiting

No. 
But what else is there?
The only good news for our pain and grief is this Jesus
    the one who came
        Emmanuel
    the one who is to come
        God with us

For him, we wait
In him, we hope
To him, we cry, "Come quickly, Lord."
We long
We yearn
We wait

The wait will be worth it, friends. I'm lighting the Advent candle confident in hope. 

If you want to know more about this hope and this Jesus, I'd love to talk more about all of this with you.