Waiting expectantly through Advent

Confession: I peek at the presents. That’s not such a big confession these days, since I’m the mom and now I buy all the presents too. But, if I wasn’t responsible for buying the gifts, I’d still sneak a peek at them, I suspect. As a kid, I would search the house for my mom’s hiding place (the shelves in the basement and the floor of her bedroom closet turned out to be the place). I’d gently undo the scotch tape, peek inside, and slide the tape back on again. I was stealth.

In stark contrast, this season on the Christian liturgical calendar is called Advent, and it is hinged on the waiting, on the longing for a savior. Advent invites us to quietly wait upon the Lord, to match our hearts to the generations who longed for a Savior who was yet to come. Advent embraces our longing by teaching us to hope and wait expectantly.

In past years, I’ve filled the Advent season in the same way I’ve filled our family’s Advent calendar: crammed full with too much chocolate. In most Decembers, nearly every day has had a party, a concert or a gift exchange crammed in, topped off with a favorite holiday treat and a Christmas movie. November first through New Year’s Day is virtually unidentifiable from Christmas Day with all of the frenzy, and while that’s fun, it’s always felt lacking.

Meet the Author

Colleen Cook works full-time as the Director of Operations at Vinyl Marketing in Ashland, where she resides with her husband Mike and three young daughters. She’s an insatiable extrovert who enjoys finding reasons to gather people.

This year, though, my heart is aching for something different. I am longing for something more spiritually substantial than where I’ve been. I’m aching for the promise of transformative Savior to bring a deeper well of joy and hope to my heart. This year, Advent is teaching me about the beauty of waiting, of pursuing, of patience in longing.

My eagerness is no less right now than it has been any year of my life. When it comes to my faith in this season, it could well be likened to the little girl who searched the house for Christmas presents, desperate to see what was to come. In this season, I’ve been doubling down on the practices that have long been a part of my life, and I’ve been exploring new spiritual disciplines, desperate for a fresh revelation and a deeper relationship with God.

In the midst of that, I’ve sought resources that might speak into the hunger in my spirit, and in doing so, I’m reading The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer, written in 1948. In it, he writes:

A generation of Christians reared among push buttons and automatic machines is impatient with slower and less-direct methods of reaching their goals. We have been trying to apply machine-age methods to our relationships with God. We read our chapter, have our short devotions and rush away, hoping to make up for our deep inward bankruptcy by attending another gospel meeting or listening to another thrilling story told by a religious adventurer lately returned from afar.

If it was true in 1948, Tozer’s argument that our cultural expectation of instant results, answers and revelation is a thousand times truer today. Deepening our spiritual life asks that we break away from the rhythm of our instantaneous culture and reconnect with the way we were before technology ever existed. Going deeper in our spiritual lives requires patience, intentionality, discipline, time and Advent. The season of expectant waiting is the key.