I’ve heard an accusation levelled at the ‘younger generation’, an accusation which goes something like this. They’re a spending not a saving generation; they don’t like waiting for anything; they demand instant gratification.
Run out of ice cream? Don't worry, one of any number of grocery services will have it at your door within a few minutes. Broken your earphones? No problem: have a pair delivered tomorrow, or even today!
Whether this is a fair characterisation of a whole generation or not, I can’t deny that the western culture that I live in (UK) has made a massive move towards this ‘instant solutions’ mindset.
Advent rips through this attitude; it ruptures and disturbs our agenda and timelines. It’s a time of waiting, and we can’t change that.
There’s a pause between the Hebrew Scriptures and the Gospels; a pause of around 400 years. We know that, and I suspect we don’t think about it much. You may have heard it characterised as a period when God was silent; a time when no prophet spoke, when Yahweh went quiet. The Old Testament finished on a minor note: the return from exile had not yielded the restoration many had hoped for, assumed even. So the Jews waited; and they continued to wait. Four hundred years of silence.
Imagine it as a gaping chasm of longing, of unfulfilled desires and hopes, of disappointment. Try to feel it.
The four hundred years between Malachi and John the Baptist was not silent in other ways! History was loud. After the Medo-Persians came the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Syrians, and the Romans. Wars and strife swirled around the history of the Jews in that period of God’s silence. And they waited.
When John the Baptist bursts onto the scene, we breathe a huge sigh of relief: the wait is over! This is a moment in time like no other and the birth narratives of Jesus, so familiar at this time of year, evoke in the reader a new anticipation and excitement. No more waiting. He has come.
He has arrived: the consolation of Israel and the hope of the nations.
Selah.
But what about us?
We Christians wait. We wait not in the way the Jews waited for Messiah.
We wait having received Emmanuel, having already rejoiced in new hope and new birth.
But as Christ ascended, angels told his followers that he would return (Acts 1:10-11). The wait has been long: the ascension happened almost 2000 years ago. How long O Lord?
But I wonder. . . are we waiting? Are we waiting, longing, full of hopes and dreams?
The promise of advent is that Jesus will return. We can live with pregnant expectation of the restoration of all things. He is coming, and he will make all things new.
This advent let’s feel that wait. Let’s experience the pause.
Let’s long for the day; pray for the day; prepare for the day.
He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. (Rev 22:20)
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