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Be patient…really? How much longer?

December 11, 2022

Isaiah 35:1-10 | James 5:7-10 | Matthew 11:2-11

Over the years, I’ve grown to love Advent and its call to us for anticipatory waiting, though it hasn’t always been that way. “Getting things done and reaching the goal as quickly as possible” has been my M.O. for much of my life. So, it made me smile when the portion of Scripture that struck me to reflect on from today’s readings was this sentence from the letter to James, “Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord.” From my early adult years onward, as Advent rolled around, I would throw questions at God like, “what do you mean about all this waiting, God? Humanity has waited 2000 years for you to return, for this “coming of the Lord” time to happen; how much longer do we have to wait?” I struggled to be patient, to wait, and to understand.   

Yet there are undeniable times when I know that God has worked through me to do things like… there is no way I would have known to say that, or I would never have chosen to travel on that road, or I wouldn’t have chosen on my own to participate in that project, or to talk with that person… but look what happened because of it! So, despite my struggles, God has taught me to listen for the voice of the Spirit inside of me which has guided me to do or to not do various things and I have slowly grown to understand it to be God working through me. Have you noticed that too, realizing God is working through your decisions, actions or plans?   

I believe it is God’s desire to “come to us” and to “work through our lives” – but we must be open to it. And so, maybe this “coming of the Lord” is like the quote Tim read to us in his sermon on November 22nd – it’s not actually that we are waiting for God to come once again in physical form to bring the Kingdom of God to us, but that God is waiting for us to be open and to allow God to work through our lives. Can it be that we might work together with God to bring about that Kingdom – that we all have a part to play in bringing it about? 

So, the patience and the waiting? We are all open to God at different times and in different ways. We need to be patient with ourselves and with each other. God will do the necessary work in us. The question is, will we be ready and open for God to “come to us” and to “work through our lives” and will we work together to bring about that glorious Kingdom of God?  

Nancy Arnold