We Wait Together

Advent is the time of waiting and preparing- but the word Advent is from the Latin word 'coming".

We are waiting, we are preparing for Christ’s coming – as the world waited more than 2000 years ago – but we know that in Advent our focus needs to be, not on the waiting but on who we are waiting for. We are waiting for Christ to come, waiting to celebrate once again the dawn of the new day when nothing would be the same.

Children may anticipate with joy the coming of Santa Clause.

Adults may prepare for families coming together at the holidays.

There are others in Guatemala that are also awaiting with joyful anticipation the coming of Dr. Brent Burket and Dr. Jennifer Thoene who will begin a three year assignment to Hospitalito in January.

In Uganda, the hospital awaits the coming of Dr. Ron and Mrs. Barbara Wick in January.

In Cameroon, Sr. Xaveria is awaiting the coming of Dr. James and Mrs. Terry Hake.

These doctors and others serve because Christ has already been born in their hearts and they can’t wait to share their skills and their faith with others.

Please keep all mission doctors and their families in your prayers this Holy Season.

We wait together. We know who we are waiting for, and we know that once again we can strive to be the one others are waiting for.

Preparing

I think it is surprising that Advent is one of my favorite times of year, because like so many of us in the US, I am not one who likes to wait.

It has been my experience that people in many other cultures are often better at this. They don’t seem to be so impatient, or hurried. People I’ve met in my travels seem more comfortable in that vast stretching time that can exist when one is waiting. Maybe that is an illusion; maybe they too feel the same frustration that I experience, and just don’t seem to show it.

But the waiting that is the anticipation of Advent is my time to reflect on how God comes to me. How God comes to me in the form of a child born more than 2000 years ago and how he comes to me today in my family members, in the person with the cardboard sign at the end of the freeway off ramp, or the patient in the rural hospital in Uganda or clinic in Guatemala.

If I close my eyes I can easily see the brightly dressed women who waited to serve a meal after a makeshift clinic had been set up in their small village church in Guatemala. I can see the mothers with children in their laps lined up, waiting to see the doctor at St. Theresa’s in Zimbabwe. They wait, but greet the stranger among them with a smile and shy giggle.

The waiting that is Advent is for me this connected waiting. I am waiting with the women in Guatemala, the children in Zimbabwe. We are all waiting. We are anticipating Christ. We are awaiting his birth into the world again so that all people will care about and care for all people.

We are the body of Christ.

We wait for Jesus to be reborn in us this advent, that we can be his hands in the world.