The Christmas Couch

Though I pretty much knew that this year I wanted to write an Advent series leading up to Christmas, I did not have a clear idea as to what I was going to write about. One day, though, browsing through Facebook, I saw it! One of my very talented photographer friends, Nataly Williams, had posted a most intriguing picture. It captured me right away. It was a picture of one of the sets she was going to use for her Christmas portraits. I don’t truly know what it was that captivated me so, but the empty couch sitting outdoors with a background of pine trees and a simple white garland hanging over top seemed to somehow speak to me.

I do believe that God has mysterious ways to grab hold of His children when He wants to communicate a message. Perhaps it was the perceived silence of the still shot. Maybe it was the gentle serenity of the scene. It might have been the unspoken implication of something worth waiting for. I don’t know, maybe it was all three, but I do think He called me and pulled me to that frame to give me a theme.

The theme is waiting...

I tell you one thing, I do not do waiting really well.  Waiting is, perhaps, one of those things I'm the worst at.  I absolutely dislike it.  The whole idea around it gives me the creeps.  I think it is because I like to be in control and because I'd like to think I know what's going on.  And, when we wait...we wait precisely because we are NOT in control and because we do NOT know what's going on. Those two concepts combined terrify me. Therefore, it is not so much that I hate waiting...but that I am scared of it.

Waiting reminds me of being at a doctor's office.  Results all up in the air...not knowing whether or not life is going to completely change or if we get another pass for now...The funny thing is that regardless of what happens when the wait is over; it is irrelevant.  It is irrelevant because, in the end, we DO know what's going on.  It is irrelevant, because, no matter what the doctor may say, it doesn't change the fact that we know how the story ends.  It is irrelevant, because our hope is not on good test results.  Our hope is in the Maker of the Heavens and the Earth!  It is irrelevant, because we live by faith and not by what the doctors say.

What I have to realize is that life consists of a series of periods of waiting, and it is while we wait that life truly happens.  It is then that we discover who we really are.  What we do during our time of waiting counts towards the shaping of our characters.  It is then that the Holy Potter molds us like clay in His Divine Hands and makes us into a new creation.  

I need reminded of these things often, since I forget quickly...

So from now until as close to Christmas as I can push, I will be writing my musings on waiting by using different examples of people of the Bible and their experiences with waiting. They all revolve around the time of Jesus’s birth. We’ll explore how from Israel as a people to the shepherds on the field and the prophetess in the temple, all the way to us here, Advent of the 2015 Christmas season, we all wait…we all wait for our King! Since I truly dislike waiting, what do you say we get comfy on this couch and keep each other company as we wait together?