by Timothy Jones
Once I was struggling to discern next steps in what God was calling me to do. (Well, there’s been way more than one time.) Over the years I’ve woven in and out of writing, editing, and pastoring, in ways that have felt both exhilarating and risky, even scary. At this juncture I wrote in my journal, “All I can do, Lord, is wait and allow you to fit all the pieces together. Help me to know that you are working everything out according to your will. Use today to allow me to believe again in your goodness.”
During that time I often came to God with my hands figuratively clenched with worry. As I still do, I got antsy. I would mentally fidget. But that morning in prayer I was able to open my fist a bit, to hand over my worries and anxieties to God. Sometimes during that time I would pray a verse from Psalm 5: “In the morning, O Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation.” (Psalm 5:3)
That helped. We can get smothered by the routine and the demands that cloud our view and don’t really give life. We can lose perspective and let a nonstop video reel run in our minds with all the possible downer outcomes. For me, at least, this happens especially in the “in-between” times, those spans when our plans have to wait--can only wait. I’m not very good at this. I’d rather see things happen, make things happen.
But there’s more than one way to wait. Waiting is not doing nothing. It is not the same as being passive. It is readying ourselves for something more. Second only to suffering, someone has said, waiting may be the greatest teacher. So we listen.
Which is how the season of Advent helps. The word Advent, when associated with the church calendar, means appearing or coming or arrival. Advent tells us to prepare—to make room for, paradoxically—the One who has already come. We get encouragement to pay attention to a larger view We get conditioned to a more hopeful outlook. These Sundays and weekdays leading to Christmas have us waiting for one who is yet to arrive in all his fullness, and maybe we forgot to look ahead to.
How can we learn as we wait and prepare and watch?
Advent reminds us that there is much already happening in God’s realm. Think of it that way, and we might feel more liable to watch while we wait. We can ask God to stand our hearts at attention. We cultivate in our souls an attitude of alertness to see the presence of Christ in our midst. “Life is just a bunch of stuff that happens,” says Homer Simpson. But not if we watch this drama of Jesus’s coming unfold across the stage of history in a little town in the Galilean countryside, in Jerusalem, and finally in history’s grand finale at the end of time.
One problem, though, is how we get caught up in ways that make Jesus’s coming harder to see. We live in times, someone said, more characterized by “Blah” than “Ahh.” Our expectations get dulled by doomscrolling. We settle for just getting by or looking out for ourselves more than looking up and around for something Larger.
But Annie Dillard, in an out-of-the-way magazine interview, once said, “If there is a God it is not an insignificant fact, but something that requires a radical re-thinking of every little thing.” Even the seemingly small matters: the prospect that attracts us or the fear that nags at us. This is a time to get ready for the infinite God of all things to become the God of everyday life, even the “every little thing” that stirs up our longing impatience. Companies of angels will announce and celebrate the coming birth, but before Jesus comes to us we may have to focus our eyes to catch the glimpses that keep us going.
And when it comes to staying awake while we wait, sometimes we need help from others, too, other folks who are also waiting and watching. A body of fellow seekers and waiters. We need not wait and watch alone. We can’t, really.
A church small group was discussing, “Why stay in the church?” as recounted by pastor Tom Long. The conversation took place some years ago, before scandals and abuses of power seemed only to intensify the question.
But “I’ll tell you what keeps me coming to this church,” one man said, with everyone seeming to lean forward in their chairs to hear what he’d say.
“It’s strange, I know,” he went on, “but I get the feeling here, like nowhere else, that something is about to happen.”
Something good, he meant. That well describes the hope at the heart of Advent. At the heart of all of life. An unseen Reality is at work, about to happen again.
Much of our waiting is, of course, filled with our preferences. Our “wish lists.” Our “I need, I need” moments, like the character in What about Bob? We have this clear idea of how we want things to work out: this job, that neighborhood to live in. We’d like one relationship to end in romance, another needy person to go away and stop bothering us.
But our goal in prayer is not to make things happen on our timetable. At such times, we can tell ourselves, as the saying goes, “Don’t just do something; sit there.” Sit. “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him,” as Psalm 37:7 puts it. We do not tame or manipulate God by a spiritual practice or particular intercession. Being still in God’s presence is a way to recall that wider angle, a way to be ready. Prayer primes us to receive a gift we cannot do without.
And those who faithfully wait “listen for the sounds and silences of God,” writes philosopher and author Cornelius Plantinga. They also, he might have also said, listen amid the times God seems absent or slow. “They quiet themselves into a kind of absorbency, a readiness to hear the word of God, and also the voice of God, and even some of the silences of God.” Even work at staying put during the apparent inactivity of God.
There’s plenty of ways to be glib about all this. We can all supply our own stories when waiting was difficult. We usually see waiting as an inconvenience but sometimes it’s nothing less than a heartache. If waiting is, like suffering, one of our greatest teachers, it’s also one of our severest. I’m thinking of seemingly intractable situations. Moments of horror or panic or deep regret. Still, we keep watching. A woman I know wrote a book titled Graceful Waiting, dealing with her struggles to be patient with God when terrible things happened. “My waiting was anything but graceful,” she told me. “The grace was on God’s part.”
That takes some pressure off. To wait means to stop trying always to steer precisely our little boat. Not that that’s easy. Not when we try again and again to put our hand back on the rudder. But God’s grace comes alongside. Waiting while relying on grace helps us see One whose outline of our lives chafes for a moment, who may not work out his plans on our lined-out schedule, but who still waits in the wings, eager nevertheless to hear our whispered longings.
“Whenever you pray,” writes the late priest Henri Nouwen, “you profess that you are not God and that you wouldn’t want to be, that you haven’t reached your goal yet, and that you never will reach it in this life, that you must constantly stretch out your hands and wait again for the gift which gives new life.” We ask for grace, for a divine assist, for a gift to help our souls awake to an awareness that, while alert, is not agitated.
And in Jesus something happens. Year after year. God, season after season, draws near. Advent reminds us how in Jesus God became a child born amid quiet surroundings. How this birth even carries sometimes hidden, sometimes extravagant effects. Born of Mary, he showed up on the premises to, most of all, make things new and better and more hopeful.
Even with Advent’s sober side, even with life’s lengthy waits and the longings that characterize some seasons, we open ourselves to the possibilities of expectant joy. We cultivate a sense that something is about to happen. And we hear an encouragement to be willing to wait for it.
Timothy Jones is a writer and Episcopal priest who lives near Nashville. He once worked as an associate editor at Christianity Today magazine. Over the years he has written several noted books on prayer. He's written for Ekstasis magazine, Fathom magazine, and The Christian Century. He blogs at revtimothyjones.com and is writing a forthcoming book on the Trinity, This Question of Love.