In all - we are waiting for God to act.  Because we know that only when God acts do things become all they were meant to be.
    A person who is willing to wait is someone who knows that he/she was made for more.
    A person who is willing to wait is a person who has learned how to live in trust, how to be sustained by hope.

There are many people in our time and culture unwilling to wait.  They live in bondage to immediacy.  And because they demand that everything happen NOW they soon become discouraged and despair.

Meanwhile

• We Christians - who are willing to wait - even in the darkness - realize that strong roots often grow in darkness.  We believe that God works in the darkness as well as in the light.
• We Christians know that if we lose patience in waiting we might miss all the lessons life has to teach us about darkness and its relationship to life.
• We Christians say that we know that darkness is not for death - but merely one way of waiting for morning and that even the darkness is a creature of God - and that no darkness can withstand dawn.

This Advent season as we wait
    - for the coming of the Messiah - the Christ One - and as we wait we prepare ourselves for that which is to be.
    - We prepare ourselves with hearts and eyes wide open to receive.
    - We prepare ourselves with mouths ready to sing Alleluia.
    - We prepare ourselves as together we proclaim,

"Jesus is coming!  Jesus will soon turn every tear into laughter.  Jesus will soon make all that is incomplete, complete.  Jesus will bind us together with each other and with God - forever."

In the coming of Jesus we know - that we are loved and always will be.    

Rev. Ben Lindstrom is Pastor at Southminster Presbyterian Church.  This article is from the December, 2007 issue of SPAN.