Jay’s Blog – Waiting, Hope, and Longing
As you read this, my family and I will be laying my father’s urn to rest today (which is technically called “inurnment”—I’ve had the privilege of burying many people, and I didn’t know that was a thing). The older I get, and the more of these things I survive, the more I wait and long for what comes next.
You may feel the same way, and for you, it may not mean losing someone you love. It may be a health crisis, a financial strain, or the paradoxical sadness that sometimes comes in what should be the otherwise joyful holiday season. You may be waiting, longing for something more than what you have now, for something better.
Our hearts were made for longing, for yearning. It’s because this world wasn’t created to satisfy us. We were made to find purpose and meaning in the God who delights in us, and to be secure and sufficient in Him. This broken, fallen world simply wasn’t made to satisfy us, and yet we look to it all the time to do just that. We buy things, especially this time of year, in a desperate attempt to satisfy our longing, but no matter how much we buy, and even if it brings us some relief in the moment, it never quenches that longing. It wasn’t meant to. It’s why the day after Christmas always feels mildly sad—we kind of expected more. And there is more, it just isn’t coming on December 26th. We have to wait for it.
Yearning for Christ to come links us with God’s people past and present. We are a waiting, hoping, yearning people. The Christmas carol “O come, O come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel; that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear” captures the mourning yet hopeful heart of Israel as she awaits the first coming of her Messiah. Likewise, we await Christ’s coming again, to restore everything and make it new.
Waiting is also tough for us. So much of Christian life is waiting, waiting on the good things, the promises of God. God doesn’t ask us to wait because he’s some kind of sadist who wants to watch us suffer as He dangles good things over our head just to see us leap for them, slightly out of reach. God knows that, in His economy and plan, He is a God of waiting—waiting for His plans to unfold, waiting for all His children to come into His Kingdom, and waiting for the time He will make all things new. He wants to form in us a heart that trusts Him, even when we don’t see immediate results. He wants us to be a patient people who have the heart of their Father, embodying a waiting spirit as we trust in a God who is also waiting. Waiting is the mark of godly character, and God wants us to have His character.
But we aren’t a people who like to wait. We are a people of “right now.” This isn’t a new development, either. I was reading Jeremiah the other day, and the prophet is encouraging the people left behind in Babylonian-occupied Jerusalem to remain there and wait upon the Lord’s salvation, rather than fleeing to seemingly safe Egypt, where Jeremiah warns them they will be destroyed. If you ever read Scripture, it will come as no surprise to you that the people completely reject God’s warnings, refusing to wait in Jerusalem, and head immediately into Egypt, where—you guessed it—they’re destroyed. Refusing to wait, taking it all into our own hands; it’s as old as humanity. (Remember Adam, Eve, and that tree God told them to leave alone?) Didn’t turn out so well, did it?)
We modern people aren’t waiters, either. When my flight is delayed, as it was last weekend, it deeply frustrates me. It almost feels like a personal offense, and I act as if getting miffed about it will make anything happen or that the universe owes me on-time delivery. Our impatience may be even worse in the 21st century, when everything moves at breakneck speed, and buffering feels like a personal attack on my temporal identity.
Why don’t I cultivate a heart that waits, longs, and yearns, not for an on-time departure but for the really good stuff: peace, the sense that God is pleased with me, that I’m enough no matter what I do, and contentment with simplicity and the quiet joy of living in the presence of Jesus and abiding in Him? We know why, of course. The enemy, the hater of our souls, wants to keep us busy, frantic, and frenetic, chasing mundanity 2.0 when God wants to give us the richness and fullness of His nearness. God wants us to hope for something more, because He promises it. Our hope is in a person, in the expectation that God has fulfilled His promises in Christ and that He will restore everything to its rightful, intended place.
Advent is the season for telling our enemy “No, not today.” It’s the season of waiting. This year, particularly, my heart longs for a new day, for the day of the resurrection, when my dad and I will walk together again. This year, why steamroll impatiently to Christmas Day, missing all the good stuff that comes with a heart that waits and longs and yearns for the things of Jesus—those things noble and good and true?
Can we say “no” this Advent? Can we just stay in tonight or tomorrow or this weekend with the ones we love, recounting how God has blessed us this year in ways we hadn’t anticipated at its beginning, maybe in ways we wouldn’t ordinarily look upon as blessings? Could we consider getting up a bit earlier tomorrow morning, before the kids, to turn on the tree lights in the quiet of the morning and wait? Can we take a few moments, or even an hour, to feel the deep sense of longing that comes from basking in the reality that, although you live in the world, you are not a child of it, that you belong somewhere else, to someone else, and let that bring you relief and comfort for the simple reason that the world you are not permanently fixed to no longer enslaves or controls you?
Maybe then, we can have that peace on earth we’ve heard so much about.
Jay Ferguson, Ph.D., Head of School at Grace Community School, writes regularly on his blog, JaysBlog.org.