Mark, My Words: November 29, 2020
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Time seems to rule everyone’s lives, doesn’t it? None of us can live for one day without clocks keeping us in line! We wear wrist watches. Our computers and our cars, our iPads and our iPhones all tell us the time—constantly! A person who does not obey clocks is called unprofessional or unreliable.
But the readings for First Sunday of Advent today look at time in a different way. From the long-ago past, long before Jesus was born, Isaiah reminds us that the people of God have been waiting. “God, why have you let us wander away from you—you’re always catching us doing something wrong, and we feel guilty and tired. Why are you leaving us in this mess!!?”
And yet—they admit, “No ear or eye has ever heard of seen anything like your awesome deeds. We are the clay, but you are the potter!”
This is the basic Advent theme: we are waiting for God’s patient love to come again in its fullness, so that all that is broken in this world can be made whole again. But this isn’t useless waiting, as if we’re at the doctor’s office or in the check-out line. This is expectant, eager waiting, the way a woman waits for childbirth.
Something wonderful is going to come of this waiting! Jesus says, “Be watchful! The moment is coming soon!” God is already among us, and yet God is coming—the already, and the not yet.
The time is ripe, so let’s wait joyfully!