I’m not very good at waiting. I have many ideas about what I think my life should look like or what I want next and I’m not very patient about it. My husband is better at waiting (sometimes too good, if you catch my drift). We are rarely on the same timeline for life – house projects, events, getting to church, etc. but somehow it comes together. For example, I have always wanted two children. After our first daughter was born, I desperately wanted another child. I felt our family, although wonderful, was incomplete. However, my husband was happy with being a one child family. After more than 6 months of “discussion,” he agreed to try for a second child on one condition - we had to have the baby during the spring or summer to avoid the majority of winter illnesses. Finally, I was getting something that my soul had longed for – what I had been waiting for – a second child. With our well laid plan to avoid illness, we had our baby in June, in the middle of a global pandemic. But here we are with two amazing daughters keeping us busy and entertained during quarantine. God has brought our lives together in an unexpected moment.
To be honest I’ve never really connected with the baby Jesus in the Christmas story. It was always Mary that held my interest. What would it be like to experience the supernatural? To be judged by those around you? To be pregnant and ride on a donkey? To give birth without modern comforts or medical professionals? To know that your baby is the savior of the world? I doubt she had planned to have her first baby fathered by the Holy Spirit, in the middle of a census, in a stable, in a strange town, but here was life unexpectedly coming together once again - all the waiting culminating in this one precious moment, in this one special child.
Did she have doubts about the fulfillment of God’s promises like I do? Was she, like me, surprised at how God fulfilled her desires? I look at her words in Luke and she appears to have much more faith in God’s goodness and a much better attitude about waiting than I do.
Luke 1:46-50, 53-54
“And Mary said,
‘My soul magnifies the Lord,
And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
For he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.
For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.
And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.
He has filled the hungry with good things…
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy…’”
If 2020 has taught me anything it is that we need hope in the waiting. This advent season I hope that despite the waiting God continues to show up and bring our lives together in unexpected ways, in unexpected moments.