Advent 1: WAIT
What are you waiting for? For the chance to be with family again? For a Covid vaccine? For a job offer? For schools to re-open? We are all learning, painfully, what it means to wait.
This Advent is a time of longing, a season of expectation and ancient yearning for the fulfillment of God's promise. As another Christian year begins today, we prepare once again for Christ's eternal coming among us. We wait for the moment when heaven comes to earth, announced by angels above. We wait for the moment when heaven is born in our midst, infusing our tired, sad world with fresh, life. We wait for our Redeemer.
Welcome to this journey through the four Sundays of Advent. Today we wait. Then we will watch. We will prepare. We will hope. We will rejoice.
--from all of us at Theological Horizons | www.theologicalhorizons.org
WAITING FOR GOD by Henri Nouwen
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Most of us consider waiting a waste of time, an awful desert between where we are and where we want to go. Waiting is even more difficult because we are so fearful. We are afraid—afraid of inner feelings, afraid of other people, afraid of the future. We have a hard time waiting because want to get away from where we are.
All the figures who appear on the first pages of Luke’s gospel are waiting. Zechariah and Elizabeth are waiting. Mary is waiting. Simeon and Anna are waiting. And right at the beginning these waiting people hear the words, “Do not be afraid. I have something good to say to you.” They receive a promise that allows them to wait, to be attentive, to live expectantly.