I must confess that I do not wait well. Waiting involves stopping, looking, and listening actively to the silence of one's life. But often I want so badly to fill it with something "constructive", to spend time doing something active. In fact, Henri Nouwen wrote that "for many people, waiting is an awful desert between where they are and where they want to go."
Advent is the season of waiting. This, though, is not the same as a season of rest. This is not a season for doing nothing. This is instead a season for actively partipating as the world waits for the coming of God. It is a season for waiting not for what we have planned, not even for what we know, but for that which is unimagineable, unintelligible, and unlike anything that we have ever known. Experience has shown us that God comes into our lives in ways and times that we do not expect. The point is, though, that God is really already there--we just have to learn to wait long enough for our lives to open up enough to see what God is already showing us--Emmanuel, God with us. This is the season to go forth and wait!
Grace and Peace,
Shelli
Your last paragraph reminded me of this:
ReplyDeleteBuechner: One Christmas Eve, exhausted, about to go to bed having put all the presents under the tree, I remembered that our neighbor had asked us to feed his sheep every day he was gone. The snow was falling -- this was in down the hill to feed the sheep. We went into the barn and we got the bales of hay. We took them out into the sheep shed, cut the string, turned on the forty-watt bulb and began scattering the hay. The sheep came bumbling up, getting close to it. With the smell of the hay, the smell of the sheep and the snow coming down, all of a sudden I realized where I was. I was in the manger and I almost missed it.
Hardin: You were in the right place.
Buechner: I was in this holy place and I might not even have seen it. I happened to see it. It seems to me that in a way, you could say that the world itself is a manger where God is continually being born into our lives, into the things that happen to us. Most of the time, if you are like me, you are looking the other way. (From an interview w/F. Buechner by David Hardin)