The Lesson in Waiting

While shopping with Julia at our favorite consignment store a couple of weeks ago, I found a necklace I love. It's "vintage," perhaps from the early 20th century. It's just beads, and very long.

I bought the purple turtleneck shirt also, and the saleslady held the necklace to the shirt and declared them a perfect match.

But I haven't worn them together yet -- the shirt was an ordinary purchase, but the necklace is a Christmas gift, from Adam to me. So it sits in its paper wrapping, in a bag, on the floor of our bedroom,with the other gifts, waiting to be put under the tree.

Adam has little patience with waiting for Christmas gifts. It makes no sense to him why we should delay giving something to someone, when it would make them happy. For years, I've nodded in concession to his reasonable approach. But still something told me that it was good to wait for Christmas.

God made humanity wait, and wait so very long. I think Adam and Eve believed truly that they would have the child, the One who would deliver them from the mess they'd made. And probably each woman for generations wondered, each time she was pregnant, "Is this the Baby?"
And then Mary. She knew the child in her womb was the Messiah, or at least she pondered and came to the full wonder of that at last. But even Mary had to wait nine months. We mothers know what it means to have a baby, and still not have it. The baby is in you! Inside your very body! But you cannot hold it, caress it, look at it, know it. What a contradiction! We wait eagerly for that delivery day, when the baby will be ours at last.
And thus it is with salvation. Humanity waited for a Savior, and He came. Now we wait for His reappearance and our resurrection -- things certain and promised.

Perhaps each Christmas as we wait through Advent, we learn anew what it means to anticipate the arrival of the thing that is already certain, and already belongs to us. Jesus.