​THE CHURCH STILL KNOWS... WAITING

We live in a world that has forgotten how to wait.

Everything is instant now. Same-day delivery. Algorithms that predict what we want before we know we want it. Waiting feels like a glitch in the system, an inefficiency to be solved.
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But the Church still knows how to wait. Not the passive, resigned waiting of people who've given up, but the active, expectant waiting of Advent. The kind of waiting that believes something is coming.

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We are a people who wait, whether we admit it or not.

We wait in small ways: in line at the store, for the next appointment. But we also wait in deeper ways. We're waiting for clarity. Waiting for healing. Waiting for an answer that hasn't come. Waiting for God to do something, to show up in a way we can actually feel.

This isn't new. The people of God have always waited. We've waited through exile and silence and suffering. The Church knows this ache. We know what it feels like to wait and wonder if God remembers.

Advent shines a light on this. We live in the in-between.

And every year, the Church invites us to stop pretending we don't.

But here's what the Church also knows, what the Church has proclaimed for two thousand years:
The God we wait for waits for us.

We assume that if we're waiting, God must be distant. Absent. Uninterested. But the Church knows something different.

God waits too. Not with impatience or frustration, but with mercy. With steadfast love. God waits for us to release what cannot carry us. God waits for us to stop pretending we're fine. God waits because God refuses to leave us to our own brittle securities. God waits because God wants us home.

This is not a distant God. This is a God who leans in.

And then, and this is the heart of Advent, God refuses to wait forever.

Advent is God saying: Enough. Enough distance. Enough watching from afar. God will not stay on the other side of our fear, our wandering, our brokenness.

God comes. God enters. God takes on flesh.

Whether you spent time in church or not, you know the story. Angels and shepherds and a young woman named Mary. A baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, laid in a manger. That baby is God refusing to wait any longer. That infant is God stepping across the distance we could not cross.

God doesn't wait until we have it figured out. God comes to us first.

The Church celebrates this every year because we need to remember it. We need to be reminded that God does not stay distant. That God entered our waiting and made it holy.

This is why the Church waits differently than the world does.

We don't wait alone. We wait as a community. We light candles in the darkness. We sing old songs about hope and peace. We tell the ancient story one more time because we need to hear it again.

We don't wait hopelessly. We wait knowing that God has already broken into our world once, and God will do it again. We practice this waiting together every Advent. We slow down when the world speeds up. We make space for God to meet us in the in-between.

So here we are, in another Advent season, in the middle of whatever we're carrying.

God waits for us. Not with impatience, but with mercy.

And God's love does not wait for our permission. God's love comes for us anyway. Comes in a manger two thousand years ago. Comes now, in this season, in whatever we're carrying today. God is here. God is waiting for us with mercy that restores.

The Church still knows this. The Church still proclaims it. The Church still waits together for the God who refuses to wait forever.

And in Christ, God comes.

Peace,
Travis Segar
Pastor for Care and Community