I don’t think there is anyone that really enjoys waiting for something. Think about it for a minute, do you like to wait? The answer for most of us is an emphatic NO!!! We hate sitting at the doctor’s office, lining up at the grocery till, stopping at the traffic light and even waiting for our coffee at Tim Horton‘s drive thru window. We simply do not like to wait. We spend a fair amount of time waiting and losing our cool.
I can’t help but think of the hundreds and thousands of years that Israel waited for the Messiah. Since Genesis a Redeemer had been promised and they waited and waited. Thinking Abraham was the one, then Isaac; then Jacob and David…years passed on… They must have been so tired of waiting and I’m sure doubt set in. Until, in the most unexpected way, God showed up… in a manger! At the perfect time, in a perfect way. And God still does.
As we wait for Christmas Day to arrive and we celebrate our Savior’s birth let’s not forget the amount of time those in Israel had to wait for the birth of Jesus.
God cares about our wait just as much as God did theirs. Although the outcome won’t be as important as the birth of Jesus, there is purpose in our wait as well.
God is wanting to birth the miraculous out of our wait, just like God did the people in the Old Testament.
Mary Jo Fox, CSJ