Advent Waiting

Advent, for most of the Church's history, has been a time of quiet, Holy waiting. You don't have to go too far back in time (maybe 100 years) to find an era when people treated Advent with the reverence it deserves. Advent is a time to wait. But we don't like to wait for anything in our culture today, do we? We have grown so accustomed to having what we want, when we want it, that we don't want to wait for anything anymore. That's because we see waiting as boring, frustrating and empty. In reality, the opposite is true, but we need to learn to wait rightly. Waiting rightly is a source of  peace, joy, and fulfillment. It gives a perspective on life that will never be seen in the anxiety and tension of our "get it now" culture.
I am around a lot of people who are forced to wait. I visit teenagers at the local detention center who are waiting - for their court appearance - for their mother to visit them - for a phone call from anyone. I have been visiting one young person who has been locked up for 4 years. She has to wait all of the time for the next hearing date, the next judge's decision or for a phone call from her lawyer. I visit people in the hospital who are waiting for a visit from their doctor - hopefully with good news. I see people in the nursing home who are waiting for a visit - from anyone. I pray with people in hospice who are waiting, waiting, waiting - to die. The funny thing is that most of these people, in hind-sight, say that the waiting was a very good thing for them. They tell me that they needed that time in "suspended animation" so they could order their own lives more rightly. They tell me they needed that time to finally learn how to pray.
Please, please, please use this Advent Season to wait. Wait for God in the stillness this season was designed to give. He might just surprise you and show up.