“In today’s world of internet and mobile phones, we have become hopeless at waiting! Emails demand immediate responses. Google is expected to provide immediate answers to all our questions. Rare are those moments of excitement and joy upon receiving a long awaited letter from a loved one abroad. Yes, waiting is seen as a major inconvenience in the modern world.
Yet with all our impatience and restlessness, the human heart is instinctively drawn to a mystery that will never be fully revealed in this life. That is the mystery of our “hide and seek” God, whose beauty shines from the face of the infant Jesus in a hovel at Bethlehem, and offers us a glimpse of a beauty which will only be fully revealed to us in heaven. Our call as Christians is to wait with expectant hope for that day when we will see God’s beauty fully unveiled.
Advent then, is a season when God teaches us how to wait patiently and expectantly for his promise to be fulfilled. For God who has promised to send a saviour will indeed send him in the person of his Son at Christmas. Our waiting with Christ this Advent, then, is not in vain. In the words of the psalmist, we can indeed: “wait for the Lord, be strong and take heart. Wait for the Lord.”