by Mark Gambill

 

I do not like to wait. I was not graced by God with patience. Just ask my wife. She knows I am usually looking for the fastest way to whatever destination I need to get to, or whatever I need to accomplish. Quicker to me means more time for something else. I take solace in the words of the apostle Peter when he says we can add to our faith certain virtues, one of which is patience—so there is hope for me! (See 2 Peter 1:3-8.) My patience has gotten a little better as I have gotten older, but I am still a victim of technology, which works to make things faster and faster.

 

Take for instance, going to the ATM versus walking up to a bank teller. Or, ordering online rather than going to the store (and now we have same-day delivery for merchandise in a lot of markets). I use the Starbucks app and place my order, and it is ready when I arrive.

 

We hit the drive-thru lane rather than going inside of most fast-food restaurants. Did you know that the average wait time for fast-food restaurants is five minutes and twenty-nine seconds? And what are we doing while waiting in the queue? More than likely we are on our phones, multitasking to speed up other things that we are doing in the meantime.

 

I am in the grocery business, and recently we have pulled more “personed” checkouts in favor of self-checkout systems. Customers think (and it is often true) that it is faster to buzz through the quick check rather than waiting in line for the registers with cashiers.

 

We Hate to Wait

Menka Sanghvi, the founder of Just Looking (a creative project dedicated to mindfulness, curiosity, and wonder), asks the question: “Why do we hate waiting?” She says:

  1. We like to know what the future holds; it makes us feel more in control.
  2. Waiting feels like not really “living” as we are in between the activities that matter. We are waiting for something to happen.
  3. We imagine we will be happier once the wait is over.
  4. Waiting is not a productive use of time, and makes us feel stressed because we are almost always busy with pressing tasks to complete.
  5. Waiting is boring, and we don’t know how to engage our minds.
  6. Waiting brings attention to the passage of time itself, which can be quite uncomfortable, perhaps because it reminds us of our own mortality.

 

Sanghvi goes on to say,

“As a society, we have a choice then: to continue to reduce waiting times on all fronts, or to give us activities to ‘fill’ our unavoidable waiting times (such as sitting on a train), most easily delivered through content or gaming apps on our smartphone. Or perhaps there is a third option, which involves changing our relationship with waiting, so it no longer bothers us.”

 

Remember when you were a kid, and Christmas could not come fast enough? We got through Thanksgiving and then it was decorating, buying presents, Christmas parties, Santa Claus, and everything else that came with the holiday. But we were all preparing and waiting for the Big Day.

 

Waiting for Consolation

In last Sunday’s sermon, our senior pastor Brad Wilson preached from Luke 2:22-40 where we meet a man named Simeon and a woman named Anna. Both were devout Jews who were patiently waiting for the arrival of the Messiah. They were both in the temple when Joseph and Mary brought Jesus in for purification rites according to Jewish law. If you missed Brad’s message last week at Christ’s Church, you can check it out here.

 

Luke introduces Simeon with a Greek word that is normally translated as “waiting” (prosdechomenos). But it could also be rendered as “ready to receive to oneself.” The term expresses an eagerness to welcome someone or something. I can see Simeon standing on tiptoe looking into the future waiting for the arrival of the Messiah. As Scripture says, Anna never left the temple, so she was definitely looking for Jesus to come. And then one day, there he was, the “Consolation of Israel”—and the waiting was over.

 

That is an important phrase: The Consolation of Israel. I like how Ligonier Ministries describes the “waiting”:

“Luke’s use of the phrase ‘the consolation of Israel’ is striking, and it is clearly to be taken in a messianic sense. Throughout their history, the people of Israel had suffered greatly, both for their own sin and because of the oppression of others. Their land was frequently overrun by foreign powers who knew the strategic significance of Palestine, which connected Africa, Europe, and Asia. They suffered under slavery in Egypt and endured the troubles of exile. In short, they were a people in desperate need of consolation and comfort—the kind of permanent comfort that could come only when the Son of David would arrive to guard them and to provide for the forgiveness of their sin.” see Isaiah 40:1, 2; 53; Amos 9:11-15.]

 

Waiting for the Real Reason of the Season

A wooden manger and three wooden crosses

As I have gotten older, I have tried to be more diligent in savoring each aspect of the Christmas season. Parties, family time, buying and wrapping presents, decorating the house, driving around looking at lights, church services, carols, and other Christmas music.

 

What about you? What are you waiting for this Christmas? The visit from relatives, a certain gift that you really want or want to give to someone else, a holiday program, a way to serve, children to come back from a far country? We wait with anticipation of what is to come.

 

So, what to do while we wait? First and foremost, determine who is at the center of your Christmas. Christ followers wait in anticipation of celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior. No matter how festive the season becomes, we cannot let all the secular celebrating take our focus away from what is most important.

 

And I would encourage you to find ways to serve in Jesus’ name—sponsor a child or family in need, participate in a toy or clothing drive, contribute to food banks and homeless shelters, be a “Secret Santa,” get together with other families and adopt a nursing home, send Christmas cards and packages to military personnel, or deliver cookies to first responders or those who spend a lot of time working in hospitals during this busy season.

 

Mahatma Gandhi once said, “There is more to life than increasing its speed.” This Christmas, while we wait, let us slow down and remember the reason for the season.

 

“But if we hope for what we do not see, through perseverance we wait eagerly for it” (Romans 8:25, NASB).

 

With over 35 years of business experience, Mark Gambill runs the East Region Real Estate Division for Albertsons; has three post-graduate degrees; has taught for over 30 years at various universities; and has been a member of Christ’s Church for over 25 years. He and his wife Karen have two sons, John and Matt, and three dogs, Winnie, Lia, and Tater.