While driving home from church this morning and looking about at the leafless trees and dormant foliage, I was thinking about how fall is a period of waiting--waiting for the impending winter with its cold and snow. And I was thinking about how so much of our lives is spent in periods of waiting--waiting for Christmas or other holidays, waiting for vacation, waiting for a wedding, waiting for a baby’s birth, waiting for physical or mental healing, waiting for relationships to be restored--so many, many periods of waiting.

After our periods of waiting, sometimes our hearts leap for joy, as our eager anticipation comes to fruition. But sometimes after periods of waiting, we are sorely disappointed by outcomes. We don’t always understand why things turn out differently than how we had hoped, how we had expected, how we had prayed. I have come to conclude in more recent years that everyone goes through a period of testing, because faith that hasn’t been tested isn’t true faith. And after a very much unwelcome period of testing, life ultimately gets better. We come out on the other side not the same, but changed, sometimes for the better and sometimes not, but changed. After several years of my life being challenging, I came to say that “I have been bent, but not broken”--I have been reformed, reshaped by the Master’s hands. And I am stronger now than I’ve ever been before. But my period of waiting for when peace would be restored in my life was a long and painful journey.

In the lectionary gospel reading for today Jesus was talking about various events that would precede his coming again, and I was thinking that this, too, all represents a period of waiting. Soon we’ll be in the period of Advent, which also is considered a period of waiting. But in the past I had viewed Advent as a period of waiting for Christmas and remembrance of the birth of Jesus. But a few years ago a pastor had broadened my view of Advent. He said that Advent is also awaiting the second coming of Christ. I thought that was a neat view of Advent because then it isn’t just the remembrance of an event that occurred thousands of years ago (not to diminish or undermine the significance of God sending his son to the earth, nor the miracle of his conception, etc.), but it makes it especially relevant to people of all ages--and in our time.

Through our belief in and prayers to the almighty, all-powerful God, we have hope that regardless of our periods of waiting in life, whether with joyful or sad outcomes, that somehow some way there is a higher plan for our lives and that ultimately peace will be restored in our souls.

To read more of Jo Gamm Witt's writings,
CLICK HERE

Email

Web Design by

WittPublishing.com