In the Meantime
Waiting is no easy thing. If we must wait we distract ourselves if possible with something practical or something entertaining. This is ever so understandable. Whether facing an hour or sixty seconds, people try to fill the time.
What I don’t like is when drivers fill the remains of the red traffic light by checking cell phones. Whatever is found on the phone becomes so much more important than noticing when the light turns green. It is fine when I do this; I just don’t want anyone else to do it.
This weekend we meet up with The First Sunday of Advent. We learn again that part of our life with God is awaiting the fulfilling consummation of God’s promise. The other part is how, meanwhile, we fill the time. At our best, we fill in with something worthy, something congruent with the Lord’s ways and paths. Look first at the Book of Jeremiah, declaring God’s promise to come:
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made… in those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days [you] will be saved and … will live in safety. (portions from Jeremiah 33:14-16)
The Branch of David that springs, we see to be Jesus, born of Mary. The lineage of both Mary and Joseph is through David the Bethlehemite. We look for the consummate saving result to be fulfilled ultimately with the Second Coming of Jesus. Meanwhile, God’s saving works and ways are ours to do. The following sampling of Psalm 25, a psalm of David, steers us well in how to conduct ourselves in the meantime:
1 To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul;
my God, I put my trust in you;
3 Show me your ways, O Lord, *
and teach me your paths.
4 Lead me in your truth and teach me, *
for you are the God of my salvation; in you have I trusted all the day long.
7 Gracious and upright is the Lord; *
therefore he teaches sinners in his way.
8 He guides the humble in doing right *
and teaches his way to the lowly.
It is true; there are no specifics described here. We are reminded of the Source. We are reminded to Whom to turn for truth. We trust in God to teach us what rightly fills this time of waiting. Things that are loving, forgiving, and patient fit the One who comes. Things kind, noble, right, pure, and lovely, match our Deliverer‘s ways.
More on this, another day, but paradoxically some of what best fills the waiting is next to nothing. I speak of the simple silence of contemplation. Listen to the classic 14th-century mystic who wrote The Cloud of Unknowing in his other great work:
“So be as blind in the loving contemplation of God’s being as you are in the naked awareness of your own. Let your faculties rest from their minute inquiry into the attributes of his being or yours. leave all this behind and worship him with your substance: all that you are, just as you are, offered to all that he is, just as he is. For your God is the glorious being of himself, and you, in the naked starkness of his being.”(The Book of Privy Counseling, Chapter 5)
I would love to have a conversation with you exploring thoroughly this manner of prayer. Let me know if you would like to look into it.
Yes, the days are surely coming when the promise will dawn with absolute fulfillment. In the meantime, we fulfill our promise to walk in the ways of the One who teaches sinners to turn toward love.