If your house is anything like ours – the excitement for Christmas is brewing, especially from the 4 year old who had no concepts of dates or time, and has no clue what time frame we are working on when we tell her “not yet – soon”. The numbers on her advent calendar are wasted

I spoke this time last year at our MOPS morning in church all about advent. We attempted some cute advent crafts with the goal of keeping some sort of faith based activity in our families in the middle of the Christmas chaos.

As I was prepping for that morning, I was reminded about the whole idea of advent. The building up towards something.

The word itself is Latin and means – waiting.

Who loves waiting? Not me.

With Christmas – the wait builds a bigger anticipation. The excitement grows as the day get closer. The wait is a good one.

So what’s different?

The number 25.

We have a final peak, we know when and what it involves. The certainty of it is not up for debate. We know. The wait is exciting when we have the end in sight.

But what happens in the other type of waiting? You know the one I mean. The wait that has been longer than we thought. The wait that seems to have no best before or expiry date. The wait that has lost that excitement of the final moment. The wait that still doesn’t see.

Advent is a season of waiting. Original advent didn’t have the number 25 either on its calendar. The wait time was unknown. In fact everything about it was an anomaly. Israel waited on rescue and God sent a baby. What?

I’m drawn to the incredible way God works things out. Again there is a simple profound truth that God will always see and do things differently. And simpler again is the underlying crutch of our faith – do we trust Him?

To quote the husbands recently penned lyrics

In the waiting I will trust in you…

As my mind regurgitates information about waiting and as my heart feels all the emotions of a long wait…. the Christmas story points me to some home truths.

God is with us.

God is working in our waiting.

As surely as the sun rises each morning – He is faithful.

In CS Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – Narnia is stuck in winter. Spring hasn’t sprung for a very long time. The people of Narnia have adjusted to winter and the majority have settled. But there are whispers of hope heard in certain circles that Aslan is coming and he’s bringing spring with him.

I want to raise the whisper to a shout.

I want to be excited in the waiting, believing that the way everything plays out is detailed and perfect. After all – He is good, He’s for us and He gives good gifts.

Be encouraged… He knows where and when number 25 is.

Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,

At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,

When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,

And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.

CS Lewis

Christmas is just around the corner.