Perhaps I'm dating myself but just maybe you too can remember this commercial....Anticipation is making me wait. It occurs to me that this marketing ploy would never work in today's society. Back in the day there was still a belief that good things were worth waiting for. It was not uncommon for people to save their money to make a big purchase - taking those months and years to anticipate the day when the amount would be enough to buy that new car, new house, new boat. Our society today is one driven by immediacy - we want it all and we want it now! Why agonize to save money when we have credit cards? Why wait for anything for that matter? I find myself irritated with my computer if the website I want doesn't load in the blink of an eye. I'm ready to throw my T.V. away because it takes approximately 2.9 seconds to change the channel and I find that infuriatingly too long.
Perhaps that is why we have such a hard time wrapping our brains around the concept of Advent. In the four weeks leading up to Christmas we are being called to anticipate...to wait...to do nothing but watch and prepare our hearts for what is to come. That is a difficult task for a society that hates waiting for anything. In stores we are decorating for Christmas in October. In churches we jump right into Christmas songs and skip the Advent songs. We don't want to wait - we want baby Jesus NOW.
I believe the Advent season is meant to force us to slow down - to anticipate what is on the way...to stop and smell the Poinsettias if you will. If we rush headlong into Christmas we have missed the great story of anticipation. We will not have thought about the work God did to prepare the world for the birth of this child Jesus. We will not have taken a moment to look up on a starry night and wonder - if a new star appeared would I have even noticed? We will not have taken the time to ask ourselves if we would have obeyed God as willingly and completely as Joseph and Mary? Would we have been supportive of the couple or gossiped about them around the village? We will not have taken the time to think about what God went though to choose, wrap, and deliver this precious gift that is coming our way.
Anticipation is making me wait. Let us spend Advent savoring the wait of Christ's coming. Yes, he has arrived once but the retelling of the story, the remembrance of it, the reliving of it, is vitally important to us today because it reminds us that we are, in a sense, still waiting for Jesus. We are still waiting for his return in which time we believe all will be made right. We wait for the time of complete and sure peace when we can beat our swords into plowshares for war will be no more. We wait for the time when God's love is made complete and expressed through every life, in every place. We wait for the time when joy will be the theme of every day and all our hopes for God to reign will be realized.
Advent welcomes us into the waiting place of anticipation where we can get giddy with the thoughts of what great things are to come. It reminds me of a beautiful Advent song: People Look East. The first verse says,
"People, look east.
The time is near of the crowning of the year.
Make your house fair as you are able, trim the hearth and set the table.
People, look east and sing today: Love, the Guest, is on the way."
Let us pray: "Holy Anticipation, that breathtaking space in-between what has been, what is, what is-to-come. Where winter dreams reveal secret longings and winded angels announce the coming of Love. You draw us to the edge of Advent possibility like the song of angels drawing shepherds - eyes wide and breath held - waiting, watching. Come, settle into our living for awhile and do not let us settle for too little. Amen."
(Prayer by Pamela Dawkins in Simply Wait: Cultivating Stillness in the Season of Advent)
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