WAITING TO BE BORN

 Scripture reflection:

Let me show you where I live among my people. My name is
‘God-with-you.’ I will wipe away all the tears from your eyes;
there will be no more death, and no more mourning or sadness.
The world of the past is gone.”

--Revelation 21:2-5

    Advent is, most surely, a time of waiting. There’s a “first day of Advent,” for most of us, we begin to “wait” for the yearly celebration as we start our preparations, as our thoughts become anticipation. We have so much to do to get ready, and there is only so much time to do it. Yet this time of year is unique in that we already know the outcome of that special event.

   Somehow that word “time” keeps coming up in our thoughts and conversation, in the midst of our anticipation. We “only have so much time to get everything done,” there’s “just so much time in a day,” we “need to be on time”—and we’re always in a hurry, we “just don’t have the time—at this time,” and so on. We’re ever so conscious of time in every way.

   Yet if we reflect on the event that is coming, the celebration of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are waiting for something that has already happened! Anxiety, a by-product of concerns about our time, is generally dependent upon the unknown. Yet, if we choose to focus on the known, the fact that Jesus was born on Christmas Day so long ago, and that, through his death and resurrection He has become an ever-present reality in the lives of each of us who call Him Lord…remembering that it all began with the birth of that infant in a lowly manger so long ago…the anxiety of it all is then gone!

   We know who this child is—the most tremendous, totally awesome outcome of that birth! We are assured of the reality of Christ’s life in ours—that God’s love is always with us! With this knowledge, we enter a timeless zone. Where once we were waiting in a way that time was a major concern, we now have the assurance that the most important part of all of Advent is actually a reality where there is no time. What an amazing, eternal gift we have received! May our anticipation of the holy celebration be one of only joy!

    Are we waiting to be born?

Prayer

   Thank you, God, for the overwhelmingly unbelievable—yet true—gift of the greatest magnitude and reality of life that you have given in this birth we will celebrate soon. We know now we have “time”—forever! Amen.

                                                         --Pastor Carol Mumford