December 2 / First Sunday of Advent
The days are coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and Judah. ~ Jeremiah 33:14
As a little girl, whenever I plaintively asked our housekeeper, Frances, when my mother would return from errands or a volunteer meeting, she invariably replied, “She’ll be here directly.” The adverb was specific enough to give me hope but vague enough to extend the future somewhat indefinitely. And so I waited. As the season of Advent teaches us with particular intensity, waiting is integral to the human condition. For all our lives, bound by time, each of us awaits the resolution of our hopes and desires. Children wait for Christmas, and high school seniors for college acceptances. Young adults wait for job offers; expectant parents for the baby’s birth (oh, that interminable ninth month!). Those who are ill wait for treatment plans and doctors’ calls. We are wired to look towards the future: the job offer, the college packet, the baby! All of these desires and longings will be answered, one way or another, only through the passage of time.
In today’s reading from Jeremiah, the Lord promises a glorious fulfillment to our waiting. “In those days,” Jeremiah proclaims, alluding to the restoration of Israel’s broken covenant relationship with God during the Babylonian exile, we will have righteous and just leadership. “In those days,” he repeats, “we will be safe and secure.” It is a vision of hope and joy, centered in God and oriented towards the future. Throughout this Advent, our readings invite us to focus our waiting on the greatest hope of humankind, the coming of Jesus Christ. As for when “those days” will come, we might let Frances have the last word: “He’ll be here directly.”
Gracious Lord, grant that I may wait in patient, hopeful expectation for your coming.Amen.
