“Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.” – Isaiah 64:4
I remain confident of this:
I will see the goodness of the LORD
in the land of the living.
Wait for the LORD;
be strong and take heart
and wait for the LORD.
– Psalm 27:13-14We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.
– Joseph Campbell
“One of the themes of Advent is the expectation that God will bring new life to birth within us; that God will be born in us today as surely as Jesus was born back then. And in addition, that a greater, unimaginable birth of the reign of God will somehow break in upon the world at some future time, when the world will, at last, be bathed in God’s love and peace and justice.
Waiting for God to break in on our lives is not all joyful anticipation. Like awaiting a real birth, we long for it desperately, and fear it at the same time. Will it hurt? Will I be the same person afterwards? Will it change me? Can I bear it? What if something goes wrong?
Like awaiting a real birth, there are moments when you can’t believe it will really happen at all – it seems too different, too impossible to be real.
Like awaiting a real birth, the realisation that it will surely happen only comes gradually: from the first wondering moments, to the certainty of the condition, then waiting through the fragile weeks when you hardly dare hope because you know it might all come to nothing. And then, at the end, when it all seems too much to bear, the certainty that there’s no going back.
Like awaiting a real birth, whether you believe it or not, it will happen anyway.”
Read the rest of Maggi Dawn’s blog post How Long, O Lord.
