Wait

The Christian calendar begins, not with January 1st, but instead with  the first Sunday in Advent.  It’s an interesting decision that the early church fathers made in doing this.  Interesting because the Christian year begins not with resolutions and activity, but with waiting.  Advent is an intentional season of preparation and pause, a time to reflect and prepare for the celebration of the coming of the Lord’s Messiah, Jesus Christ.  There is great wisdom in this decision, particularly for our current times.  We live in a culture of hurry and rush and activity, the last thing we want or like to do is wait for anything.
By starting the year with a season of waiting, we are invited to settle into a different rhythm of life and living, a rhythm that is ultimately about trust.  Trusting in the God who created Time, trusting in the One who has set His plans in motion and will see them through, trusting that there is One who knows and understands more than we do, trusting that He is good and that He is love.
So the Christian calendar begins with a reminder that there is a holiness and a righteousness in waiting.  But there is a hard-ness and challenge in waiting as well.  The Psalmists cry out, with great regularity, “How long, O Lord?”  Even as they wait on the Lord, they express their frustration, their discontent.  And in that we are shown that there is such a thing as a holy discontent.
The first sermon in this series explores our frustration with waiting and how we can find God in the midst of our discontent.  The second sermon flips the coin to seek to understand why God is waiting and what we learn about Him through it.  Finally, the series concludes by declaring that, for the Christian, the wait is over, the Messiah has come; and yet we are still waiting, waiting for the Messiah to return.
These sermons were preached over the course of Advent, 2012.
It is my prayer that, through these sermons, you would find the presence of God in the midst of whatever it is that you are waiting for, and be moved to a place of deeper trust in Him.

Rev. David Garrison
December 31, 2012