Advent Anticipation
Growing up I loved the Christmas season. I was always so excited to decorate the house with garlands and lights. One of my favorite Christmas decorations was a wooden snowman my Mom made herself. It didn’t look like much. It had scraggly twig arms and googly eyes glued to a thin two-by-four, but it was the best among all our Christmas decorations because it had a built-in countdown to Christmas. Every morning the anticipation of that fateful day of present opening and sugar rushes grew closer as I moved the numbers, hung by nails below the snowman’s smiling face, closer to zero.
A Season For Waiting
Little did I know then that I was learning the core posture of the Christmas Season. For followers of Jesus, Christmas is not primarily about sweet treats, garland and lights, or trees packed with presents beneath their evergreen branches. It’s about waiting. It’s about learning the slow, and sometimes agonizing, posture of patience. Christians in ages past called the weeks leading up to the celebration of Christ’s birth, Advent. Advent comes from the Latin word adventus, meaning arrival. It’s a season in the church calendar designed to cultivate our awareness of God’s faithfulness in the past, present, and future. During the four Sundays leading up to Christmas, we anticipate the joy of Christ’s first coming, in fulfillment of the promises of God to save His people. But there is a tension in Advent for, while Christ has come, we also wait for Him to come again to bring His Kingdom in its fullness and restore this hurting world. In this way, Advent also calls us to enter into a posture of hopeful, patient waiting––just like the Israelites of old. As a child, the anticipation I felt rising as Christmas drew near captures a sense of what we all should feel during the Advent season as we wait for Christ to come again and set all things right.
Always Waiting
Yet, this hopeful, patient, anticipation should actually mark every day of our lives, not just the weeks leading up to Christmas. Paul writes in Romans 13:11-14,
“Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.”
Paul gives a wonderful metaphor to explain the posture we should have as we wait for Jesus to return. I love the way the NIV translation puts verse 12, “The night is nearly over; the day is almost here.” Paul is claiming that the place in God’s plan of redemption that we are living in now is like the quiet hours of dawn–the strange mixture of light and dark that marks twilight. Why? Because in His first coming, Christ defeated all the forces of evil in His death and resurrection. When the true Light came into the world, He overthrew the darkness once and for all, but His kingdom has not yet come in its fullness. There is still sin and sorrow to wrestle with as we wait for all to be set right. Like the wee hours of the morning, the night is still holding on, but the day is assured of victory, for the sun is already rising. Just as the world anticipates the coming of the day with birds chirping and plants stretching toward the sun's rays, Paul calls us to live as if the day is already at hand, for in a very real sense, it is! Instead of the actions people hide in the dark, Paul calls us to boldly live in light of the new world that Jesus has won for us, but living the future now requires patience because this world is not yet all that it should be. The day has come, but still the night lingers on.
Not Waiting Alone
When I think about how excited I was as a child waiting for Christmas day, it makes me wonder where that anticipation has gone. If the Christian life is all about waiting for something far better than a day of presents and sugar rushes, shouldn’t we always be filled with a sense of hopeful, patient, anticipation? I know I’m not. I’m awful at waiting. I’m easily frustrated by slow drivers. I can’t stand commercial breaks. I don’t like Disneyland because of all the long lines. Often I fluctuate between impatience for Christ’s return or ignoring it all together, but I don’t think I’m alone in this. If we were all filled with hopeful anticipation for Christ’s second Advent, we wouldn’t be so thrown by our setbacks or obsessed with our successes.
The good news is that we don’t have to struggle and stumble in our waiting alone. The Savior we wait for is the Savior that is with us even now. Because of His first Advent, sin has been overthrown and we can live in right relationship with the Father, Son, and Spirit. Because of His first Advent, we have a forever friend on the journey. Because of His first Advent, we can have hope for His second coming because all the judgement we deserve fell on Him in His death for us on the cross. This Christmas season, let’s be reminded anew of all the wonderful blessings we have in the gospel as we celebrate Christ’s first Advent. And may we learn anew the virtue of a child's hope-filled anticipation as we wait for Him to come again.