Advent

"I can't WAIT until Christmas Eve!"

That's what my daughter said to me, the day after Thanksgiving. It struck me as a bit unusual, since it's Christmas day when we open our presents. But she's looking forward to the excitement on Christmas Eve. The traditions we have. The anticipation.

That's what Advent is -- anticipation. Waiting. And knowing that what we are waiting for is worth the wait, no matter how long it will be.

Think about the nation of Israel. They were promised a Deliverer, a Messiah. They knew He was coming. They waited for him.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited. They waited so long that they forgot what they were being delivered from. They forgot the point, and decided He was coming to deliver them from the Romans. But they still waited.

In Luke 2, we read about Simeon, a man who had been promised a look at that Deliverer before he died. When he saw the Christ child, he rejoiced, knowing that the Deliverer had come. The wait had been worth it.

We've become an impatient people. Our high speed Internet is still too slow -- I can remember when I upgraded to a 56k modem from our old 14.4, and I still think that my new, high speed cable connection is slow at times. We don't like to wait at all.

Sometimes we think we are waiting for something that will never come. We decide we must have misunderstood someone somewhere, and that what we're waiting for isn't coming at all. We think we may have missed it completely; it came already, when we weren't looking, and we didn't notice it. We keep waiting, we think, in vain for something that isn't coming. Or we give up completely, and stop anticipating.

We're promised something in Scripture; we're promised that "This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven. (Acts 1:11)" We anticipate that coming, just as Israel anticipated His first coming. We don't know when it will happen, in spite of some really ridiculous things that we say about him coming in, oh, say, 1988, or 2000, or 2012. We don't know when He's coming back. Sometimes, we think that we've missed it; that the Preterists are right, and He really came back in 70AD and nobody seems to have noticed it. Sometimes we think that maybe He isn't coming back after all. But we've got that promise in Acts. He's coming back just like He left.

As we enter this season of Advent, the season of anticipation, let's remember that we still have something to look forward to. And celebrate, because it will be worth all the waiting we've done.