by Wanda Bickers

One of the gifts of my role in the church and with Coracle is that I get to start preparing for Advent in October. There have been seasons when this seemed like a burden, rushing around in the Fall trying to figure out what Advent services and retreats could look like this year.  This has changed over the last several years as I have come to enjoy soaking in the season long before others even begin to think about the Christmas holidays.

This year has been particularly meaningful to me as I have been marinating in the Advent stories in preparation for our upcoming Advent retreat.  It is amazing how passages I have read before have a whole new meaning for me this year.

For instance, Simeon and Anna strike me as the unsung heroes in Luke’s account.  We are unsure of Simeon’s age, but we know he was old. Anna, they believe, was 84.  Both had been promised that they would see the Messiah and they had been waiting for decades!  I think about how impatient I get with waiting on the Lord, and compared with these two, my waiting seems comparatively short.

The Greek word for waiting used in Luke to describe Simeon can be translated as an “eagerness to welcome.” We also read in Luke that he knew the Holy Spirit; it rested on him, showed him things, and moved him.  So when Mary and Joseph brought Jesus into the temple, and he held him in his arms, Jesus went from “God with us” to “God with me.”  Anna was also waiting, and when she saw him, she did not keep quiet, telling others that the Messiah had come even though he was still just a tiny baby.  I want my waiting to be charged with eagerness, and my life to declare that “God is with me.”

I have been rereading Making Room for Advent by Bette Dickinson.  It is a must-read Advent book! She observes:

“Out of the withering stump of Jesse, Jesus would grow into a fruitful tree that gives life to the world because that is just what God does.

He makes barren places fruitful.

He renews old places with new life.

He takes what is dying and grows a shoot of hope.

This is what God does when Jesus first enters the scene, and it is what he does through the stories of those who make room for him. Could it be, then, that what seems dead in our world may be the very ground where new life grows? The very place where we have said …

• “I can never recover from this.”
• “It’s too late for me.”
• “I have made too many mistakes.”
• “No good could come from this.”
• “That dream is dead.”

…this could be the very place into which God springs new life-from an old decaying stump.” (pages 4-5)

As I think about Simeon and Anna, I am moved by how over the course of decades they never stopped waiting with expectancy.  They hoped that the Messiah would come and bring hope to the waiting world, that Jesus would bring life to his people. I know more than ever that I need to nurture the hope that what has been promised will be fulfilled in Jesus.

As you enter this Advent season, where might he be offering you life in a place where you’ve been waiting and looking for a long time?