Waiting for Christ: Mid-Week Reflection

THE REV. DAVID STODDART

So I am waiting for Christ as my car sits in stop-and-go traffic, painfully inching my way through the Corner. I am late, and I feel impatience rising up within me, confronted yet again with circumstances I cannot control. This busy time of year affords many such moments: juggling band and choir concerts; getting home and church ready for Christmas; dealing with sermons, pastoral visits, Facebook posts. It feels like my schedule controls me more than I control my schedule. And yet . . . the Gift is still there, waiting to be given. So sitting in traffic, rushing around, working assiduously—in all these things, I am waiting for Christ.

If the Incarnation means anything, it means that God has come among us in the concrete circumstances of human life. There is no situation too prosaic or too awful for Christ to enter. We could expend huge amounts of time and energy trying to create the perfect holiday setting for Christ to appear in or manufacture the right religious feelings to greet Christ with—and then miss the Jesus who has been coming to us all along. The fact is, if I cannot wait for Christ in line at the grocery store and be receptive to him then, I probably will not find him at Midnight Mass, either.

It is never too late to observe Advent, to practice waiting for Christ in the here and now, wherever we are, whatever we might be doing. I know that when I remember this and try to live it, however imperfectly, I realize the Presence more fully and experience a greater measure of peace and joy.

A favorite poem of mine has been surfacing in my consciousness recently. It gets at this theme of meeting God in the reality of our lives. It is written by Galway Kinnell and it’s entitled, “Prayer”:

Whatever happens. Whatever
"what is" is is what
I want. Only that. But that.

So be it. Amen.