Anticipation.
Remember it?
I wonder sometimes, if in our adult manifestations of the season, we forget that Advent, Christmastime, Yuletide is in fact marked by the waiting.
We 'got this' big time as children. Counting down the days in oh so many impatiently creative ways. Little chocolate treats behind little numbered doors. Quilted pockets that revealed a new decoration for the tree each day. Or maybe just a sticker on the calendar all leading to the big number 25!
And didn't it seem to take oh so long! We ached with anticipation.
Then we grew up and got all busy about it. Suddenly, what used to take forever was now upon us in no time. We traded anticipation for a stressed-out sense that the markings on the calendar were now against us in the opposite direction. There is no waiting for Christmas. It's trying to keep up with it that's the problem.
It's taken me a long time, but I think I finally figured out that this is why I am so intent on having most of the cultural expectations of Christmas ready by the end of November. The cards, the shopping, the wrapping, the meal plans. If that's all pretty much in the works as December arrives, not only can I enjoy what the season has to offer, but I'm waiting for it. There's an eagerness, a keener sense of something, what is it, yes....a keener sense of anticipation.
Longing is a good thing. It means there is something loved even in its absence. It means life's goodness lingers even in the dark. It means we are humans hoping.
This Christmas I am freshly back from longings fulfilled in my recent time at Hot Springs. All the aching of almost three years away transformed into so much goodness and joy and love, I can't even. Of course, now I am in a state of longing again, even as I embrace and choose to be fully present in the goodness of family and friends (and hardly knowing the difference) here on this side of the planet. It never ends and is just a 'thing' for those whose hearts live in more than one place.
But it helps me now. To reclaim, not just a childhood sense of anticipation, but a deeper theological reflection of longing. This time and space in which we live now.
Oh, our planet it aching for it! Wars and famines and plagues and tyranny and injustice and corruption and fear and gruesome atrocities. And this is Christmas, really. Aching with anticipation for the day when every tear will be wiped from our faces (Revelation 21:4), and no one will make us afraid (Micah 4:4).
In the corners Christmas, where the soft lights hum, I hear Him. He's on the way.
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