There’s a whole lot of waiting in December.
Waiting to buy presents at the mall, waiting in line to visit Santa, waiting to open gifts, waiting for the mail to come each afternoon, waiting for school to get out, waiting and waiting and even more waiting.
Waiting
is hard. Patience is a virtue, after
all, and maybe even more so in December.
Our patience already worn thin by the pressures we heap on ourselves
during this, the busiest season of the year, we look for joy in so many places. Sometimes, we find it. Joy is in
all those places we seek to discover it.
There
is joy in searching for just the right gift for the people you love most. There is joy in rolling out cookie dough and spreading
icing on sugar angels. There is joy in
coming up with clever elf tricks after the kids go to bed and hiding that
perfect present in a spot no one will think to look and drinking eggnog with family
members you wish you saw more than once every twelve months.
But
that virtuous patience . . . sometimes it stretches so thin it simply can’t
hold, and the waiting suddenly begins to feel void of anything worthy of honor.
Still, the waiting . . . it does mean
something.
In
December, we wait because we have hope for what is to come. We wait for the One we know is coming. We wait
for Him, and HE. IS. ALWAYS. WORTHY. He is
void of nothing, except for sin, and he came as a baby to grow into a man who
would become our sin, and die for our sin, and forgive our sin.
We
worship the day the baby came. We
worship with trees covered in lights and wreaths on every door and songs about
a manger. We wait all month and then we
worship the baby who became a man and a Savior.
We gather and we celebrate and the joy . . . it’s so full.
Christmas
is just so full.And yet, the waiting continues.
Because He came, and He lived, and He died, and even after December is over and the trees and wreaths have been put away, we will not forget. The One who came as a baby in Bethlehem? The One who lived as a human without sin? The One who died on a hill in Calvary?
He is coming again.
That’s why the waiting means something, my friends. Waiting for Him shows all the world that WE BELIEVE.
We
believe in the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes. We believe in the man who taught us what love
means. We believe in the Savior who hung
on a cross to set us free.
We
believe in Jesus, and this Christmas, and all the Christmases to come . . . We will wait for Him.
Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall
strengthen your heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.
Psalm 27:14
