Reflection for December 13

In The Meaning Is in the Waiting, Paula Gooder admits her own impatience with the waiting of Advent. But her perspective changed during her first pregnancy. She realized then that she didn’t want the pregnancy to end prematurely, that the birth should go full term. Through her pregnancy she came to see waiting as both a way of being and a gift. “Pregnant waiting” deepens our experience of that which we anticipate. Yet to wait is not to remain passive, but rather to participate in a nurturing process.

Waiting during Advent is a spiritual discipline; it trains us in the art of seeing as Christians, in the ability to see where and how God breaks into our world. Sometimes God enters our world in the most unexpected ways and unlikely places—like a Christ child born in an unbecoming stable.

If something like that were to happen again, could we see it? (Richard A. Kauffman, “Must we wait for this?” posted at http://theolog.org)