What are you waiting for?

A promotion? That much-needed vacation? Your baby to sleep through the night. . .or to come home for Christmas?
Test results from the doctor?

Whatever it is, waiting can be rough.

This is our fifth winter on the lake now and the silence falls as heavy as the snow outside my window. The autumn colors have faded, leaving stark silhouettes against a monochromatic palette of gray and white. For months, the landscape looks cold and barren. Unattended. It would be easy to think this season will never end.
If I took an informal poll in February and asked people what they were waiting for, I’m sure a lot of them would laugh and say, “SPRING.” Okay. . .maybe they wouldn’t laugh!

But even on the coldest days. . .the days when the trees shiver in the wind and the first. . . fourth. . .tenth. . .storm of the season rolls through. . .I know that spring will eventually return. I know that beneath the snow there is movement. Things happening that I can’t see.

Water flows underneath the ice. The branches of the trees might look barren, but at just the right time, buds will begin to form. When the snow starts to melt, the grass beneath it is already bright green.
I’ve heard locals say that up here, we have nine months of winter and three months of poor skiing. Not quite true, of course, but what if winter lasted four hundred years? Would we lose heart? Get discouraged? Or would we prepare for the advent of spring, trusting that it would eventually come?

Advent. The word means “coming”.

There were four hundred years between the Old and New Testaments. Four hundred years of silence.
But in that silence, God was still at work. His plan unfolding even though no one could see it.

And then, in Bethlehem, a newborn’s cry and an angel choir.

New life. . .and new life.

A promise fulfilled.

Jesus.

Emmanuel. God with us.

No matter what you’re waiting for, let your heart and soul and mind settle into that truth.

And He is always trustworthy. Always faithful. Always keeps His promises.

Always with us.

“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder.
And his name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” (Isaiah 9:6 NKJV)

Have a blessed Christmas,
Kathryn