What Are You Waiting For?

I think of the word Advent as “waiting.” It’s the anticipation, the hoping, the looking for the Christ child. I imagine what it was like before He came—talk about waiting. And even now, there is a waiting for me in this season, like a child I’m waiting for the big day to finally arrive.

I looked up the word Advent and saw that I was wrong. It actually means “coming” in Latin. Now there’s a difference between waiting and coming obviously; one that I’ve missed in the Advent season.

I think of the word Advent as “waiting.” It’s the anticipation, the hoping, the looking for the Christ child. I imagine what it was like before He came—talk about waiting. And even now, there is a waiting for me in this season, like a child I’m waiting for the big day to finally arrive.

I looked up the word Advent and saw that I was wrong. It actually means “coming” in Latin. Now there’s a difference between waiting and coming obviously; one that I’ve missed in the Advent season.

Waiting is defined by Encarta as “to stay in one place or do nothing for a period of time until something happens or in the expectation or hope that something will happen.” Yep, that’s exactly how I feel about it. Stuck. Tapping one foot. Ho hum. Waiting. That’s how I imagine it felt back then before Christ. That’s how it feels some days now too.

Coming. Well, that’s different. It’s in motion and about to happen. When I’m waiting for someone and text to see where s/he is, I want “Coming” to be texted in response. The wait will soon be over and things are about to get started. Knowing someone is coming makes it so much easier to wait.

The thing is I should have known all this. One of my favorite songs is “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” mainly because a church asked me to dance to it last Advent season, and I found the most beautiful version—not that funeral dirge we can make it out to be. I looked at the words carefully when I worked choreographed to that song, and I saw so much in the advent of Christ. His coming, not our waiting.

As it says, we rejoice, rejoice, because Emmanuel (God with us) has come to us. There is a waiting involved, but it is the waiting of someone with the knowledge that the one we hope for is coming. Not the waiting where we’re tapping our feet hoping He might stop by.

So, I pray that this season is not one where waiting is on your mind. Instead, I want our Advent season to be underlined by His coming, the things that were swung into motion by that, and still are in motion even today.

Rejoice. Rejoice.

(And if you want to hear that version of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” that makes me rejoice, try it here. It’s sung by Rosie Thomas.)