Advent: Waiting for You

The past few years I've been learning to be more mindful of the Church's Liturgical year.  Repeating the story, remembering the Story, being present to it throughout the days, weeks and months helps me to live into the reality of the Kingdom that is often and easily forgotten. 

To value waiting is a hard thing to do in this world.  A season to focus on the practice of waiting, to enact Israel's long waiting for a Messiah teaches me the best things come in God's timing. A couple of weeks ago a friend sited the Bonhoeffer quote above and it struck me. The most precious and tenderest things come through waiting.  

My housemate has been cooking all day long as I've been working from home. From all the raw ingredients he has been carefully making a delicious meal for hours now. The fragrance is invisibly filling the house with the beauty of his slow craft. A Great Table is being prepared for us if we can wait for it - if we can refrain from the hasty mistake of Esau, as Hebrews 12 describes. 

Plenty of quick fixes. Plenty of ways to bypass the difficulties of life, of the aching waiting. But the waiting cultivates in us the capacity for the things God is preparing. 

In 2009, I released an album called "Waiting for My Love".  I realize even more in retrospect that it is an Advent album. So I've been singing this song a good bit the last few weeks. You can listen to the full song below the text. 

Our love was a flower pressed in a book

from a long-forgotten Spring 

till a Wind stirred the pages

and the windows all shook

and a sea of bell-stars rang

When love long lost came back 

remember we are waiting 

waiting for you, waiting the long night through

Listen to Waiting For You