Saturday of the Third Week of Advent 2024

My mom talks about how when she was pregnant with me, she could sometimes see me rolling my little fist across her stomach–my knuckles outlined on her belly. I have no memories of those prenatal acrobatics, but she and my dad remember. Their tiny baby is now a grown man, but that little fist saying hello from within left enough of a mark that she can talk about it 30 years later. As our Advent waiting gets closer to ending, we’re swept up in a similar joyful image of waiting–of love not yet fully seen but nonetheless believed. And in that belief the wait moves from task to delight. We are called up into sweetness still to come, into an embrace deepened by delay.

We’re used to thinking about waiting alongside ideas like patience, endurance, and suffering. But what about joy? Can we sit still long enough to let the discipline of waiting lead to the joy of resting in a good thing, in Goodness Himself? That little fist on my mom’s stomach decades ago spoke a promise to her and my dad. That all the backaches, sleepless nights, and other pains of pregnancy would be beyond worth it. That a child really was coming. Not just any child–their child, their son. My parents could wait, and bear the less than pleasant parts of that wait, because they believed in the goodness of what was coming once those nine months were over. We’ve waited these 3 weeks so far and are now invited to rejoice as we take stock of who we’re waiting for. Not just a savior, our savior. Not just a random, poetic ‘lover’ in Song of Songs, but our lover. Our God and King. Our faithful and promised Friend. Our Jesus. So if these past 3 weeks, months, years, or decades have been more labor pains than happy baby bumps and cute photoshoots announcing life to come, rejoice anyway. Dig deep and ask the Christ Child to leap within you, to call out to something or someone around you and get you out of yourself and into His life and love. Ask Him to let you see a little foot or fist pushing out in joyful defiance of the labor of waiting. And even if He doesn’t show you what you’re looking for, sing all the same. After all, it's to you and me that He says, “Let me see you, let me hear your voice, For your voice is sweet, and you are lovely.”