Not All Waiting Is The Same

This week, my mom and I went to Hobby Lobby to buy wrapping paper and stationary. If I’m being entirely honest, Hobby Lobby—when you’re looking closely—is a very weird sensory experience. The passage of time doesn’t matter. The walls are beige, the music soft and indecipherable, and the piles and piles of discounted clutter watch mutely, sentinels of consumption.

Even though the store wasn’t crowded, the checkout line moved at a glacial pace, and my mom and I waited and waited and waited to pay for the rolls of wrapping paper. I made jokes, I counted the mints by the counter, I annoyed my mom, and I scrolled on my phone. That kind of waiting wasn’t very fun at all.

Last month, my roommate and I took the two-hour drive up to Disneyland, and I spent a decent portion of the day monitoring wait times for the rides to minimize how long we had to stand in line. Despite my obsessive checking and re-checking, we ended up waiting nearly an hour and a half for one ride. I told my roommate riddles, we played I-spy, we took pictures, and we told stories from high school. That kind of waiting was a little better.

Flying home for Thanksgiving this week, I had a layover in Oakland that was pretty tight. By the time I got off the plane, walked through the airport, and bought a snack, my next flight was already boarding so I just walked right on without waiting very much at all. I think that kind of waiting is one of the best.

But unlike checkout lines, Disneyland, or airport waiting, advent waiting involves a different kind of posture. English, unfortunately, doesn’t have separate words for “waiting,” whether it’s waiting for a house to sell, waiting to checkout, waiting for the doctor, or waiting for the miracle of Christ’s birth to come back around. But don’t worry. If I’m ever consulted on the creation of a new language, I’ll make sure to invent enough words to make the distinction.

Advent is the season before Christmas where we prepare room in our hearts for Jesus. It’s the anticipation of the miracle to come, holding the tension between what we know will happen and what hasn’t happened yet. It’s not as if we are waiting for the literal birth of Christ again (though I’ll confess that I can’t be entirely sure. Everyone got it wrong the last time…). He was born over two thousand years ago in a Middle Eastern town to a traveling couple. But this season is about both remembering and waiting. We remember that Christ was born as a helpless baby, and we wait for that day again.

Waiting in line for an airplane or for a ride at Disneyland is fundamentally different from the kind of waiting we do for advent. Waiting in line means shifting from one foot to another, scrolling on social media, answering texts, taking a phone call, thinking about dinner, and wanting to be somewhere else. Life is mostly on pause while in line, and the longer the line, the more we tend to resent the interruption. Or, in some cases, the more we think about the implications of Hobby Lobby and purgatory.

But during the season of advent, life keeps going. We take our kids to school (if we have kids), we go to work, we grocery shop, we visit family (if that’s safe), we fill cars with gas (if we have one), and we go to church (if you don’t, you should check out Spring Church). The rhythms of our days continue, but in advent, we take on the attitude of waiting and preparing room in our hearts for the coming birth of Christ, and the miracle that is Christmas day. We wait even as we do other things. We’re not waiting in line, we’re waiting in our everyday lives so that every action we do takes on this hint of anticipation; our hearts and minds are on Christ, every day getting closer to the miracle, and every day our hearts getting less cluttered with the things that don’t matter.

“Alright, Emma,” you might say. “That sounds really nice, but it’s pretty abstract. I know what waiting in line feels like, but what on earth am I supposed to do to wait during advent?”

That’s a great question. For some answers, I’m going to turn to my great teachers of spiritual practices: my parents. For the last few advents that I can remember, my dad has said a verse out loud every time he sees Christmas lights lit up. So we’ll be driving around town, or walking down the street, and when we come across the twinkling lights along someone’s roof, he says, “A light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5 NIV). Most years my mom does an advent bible study, with different verses and reflections assigned for each day, specifically designed to help prepare the reader for Christmas.

While there are, technically, wrong ways to go about waiting during advent, there are plenty of right ways too, usually looking like spiritual practices that are repetitive, meditative, and centered around the not-yet coming of Jesus. These practices are active, with other people, building hope, and bringing us closer and closer to Jesus and others. Maybe this is a season to pick up a devotional, memorize certain Scriptures, or pray a certain prayer. Maybe this is a season to set up a weekly dinner, invite uncommon friends to share a meal, or get together with people from your community to talk about a devotional, Scripture, or podcast. Tie new practices to existing habits and see how the meditations of your daily rhythms change as you prepare room in your heart, with others, for the coming miracle of Jesus, and in the process helping you to become more and more in his image.

Join us this Sunday as we get ready for advent, talking about waiting, listening, and tuning in to what God is already doing around us.

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