Advent 3: It's the waiting that gets us

God promised Abraham a son. And he couldn't wait! So he had a son, Ishmael, by his servant-woman Hagar. The son of the promise, Isaac, came later. That impatience has complicated the history of the lands inhabited by their descendants for millennia.

In the desert, God promised to lead the Israelites, and Moses went up the holy mountain for 40 days. The Israelites couldn't wait. And so they made a golden calf as an idol.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, the disciples had a different kind of trouble waiting: While Jesus went to pray, they fell asleep. 

As human beings, patience is not our strong suit. When God asks us to watch and wait, we either don't watch, or we don't wait. Sometimes we try to force a miracle to happen on our own terms and our own deadline. Sometimes, when something important is happening right in front of our eyes, we don't realize and aren't paying attention.

Part of Advent is waiting -- where we remember not just Jesus' original arrival in our world, but look forward to his return. Until then we have been asked to watch and wait, among our other tasks. The Gospel of Matthew records Jesus teaching parables that I think of as the Parables of the Long Absence: where a whole collection of sayings and parables drive home the point that the wait will be so long that the wait itself becomes a problem (Matthew 24:44-25:30). We can't say he didn't warn us. 

The wait is a temptation to force our own solutions, or find other solutions, or give up our expectations. That's what people do, when we are asked to wait a long time. But even when we try to force a solution, God still has his own. After Abraham had Ishmael, he still had Isaac. After the golden calf was turned to dust, God still led his people, still sealed his covenant with Israel. Those who have kept their expectations in God's promises have seen God prove himself faithful.