more than watchmen wait for the morning

I confess that I have not been practicing advent well. I have not given it the time it deserves. I wrote earlier this month about the discipline of waiting. I stil am not sure I know exactly what to wait for; however, that doesn't bother me as much as the fact that I do not know how to wait. I am taught from my culture that there is no sense in waiting. Either I should be able to readily grasp what it is that I desire, or for the things that take time, I should be able to use that time to do something productive. Thank goodness I have my cell phone with me so that everytime the world tempts me to wait I can call or text a friend because waiting is a terrible waste of time.

Now I don't know how God wants us to wait. These days I am waiting for my semester grades to come in, but I am not sitting around by the computer refreshing my portal every three minutes. Waiting is not normally something that consumes the moment.

Psalm 130 tells of a different manner of waiting:

5 I wait for the LORD, my soul waits,
and in his word I put my hope.
6 My soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.
7 O Israel, put your hope in the LORD,
for with the LORD is unfailing love
and with him is full redemption.
8 He himself will redeem Israel
from all their sins.

Apparently there is a need for redemption that I am not aware of. Its almost a funny thing to say considering I often am surrounded by those in circumstances that explicitly shows this need for redemption of the world. Paul in his letter to the Romans mentions as well that "creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed" and we too "groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies." Again, redemption! How is it that I forget my/our/the need for redemption? What am I settling for? If I have no need for redemption, I have no faith and without faith where is my hope?

No, I don't think that sitting around and waiting for God to restore is God's call on our lives. Suffering (with others), maybe, is how God wants us to wait. Because in suffering, we are aware of the need for redemption. We won't wait unless we suffer with others. In suffering though there is room for joy because we have hope for resoration.

Isaiah 30:
15 This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says:
"In repentance and rest is your salvation,
in quietness and trust is your strength,
but you would have none of it.
16 You said, 'No, we will flee on horses.'
Therefore you will flee!
You said, 'We will ride off on swift horses.'
Therefore your pursuers will be swift!
17 A thousand will flee
at the threat of one;
at the threat of five
you will all flee away,
till you are left
like a flagstaff on a mountaintop,
like a banner on a hill."
18 Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you;
he rises to show you compassion.
For the LORD is a God of justice.
Blessed are all who wait for him!

Hosea 2

Israel Punished and Restored
2 "Rebuke your mother, rebuke her,
for she is not my wife,
and I am not her husband.
Let her remove the adulterous look from her face
and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts.
3 Otherwise I will strip her naked
and make her as bare as on the day she was born;
I will make her like a desert,
turn her into a parched land,
and slay her with thirst.

4 I will not show my love to her children,
because they are the children of adultery.

5 Their mother has been unfaithful
and has conceived them in disgrace.
She said, 'I will go after my lovers,
who give me my food and my water,
my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink.'

6 Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes;
I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way.

7 She will chase after her lovers but not catch them;
she will look for them but not find them.
Then she will say,
'I will go back to my husband as at first,
for then I was better off than now.'

8 She has not acknowledged that I was the one
who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil,
who lavished on her the silver and gold—
which they used for Baal.

9 "Therefore I will take away my grain when it ripens,
and my new wine when it is ready.
I will take back my wool and my linen,
intended to cover her nakedness.

10 So now I will expose her lewdness
before the eyes of her lovers;
no one will take her out of my hands.

11 I will stop all her celebrations:
her yearly festivals, her New Moons,
her Sabbath days—all her appointed feasts.

12 I will ruin her vines and her fig trees,
which she said were her pay from her lovers;
I will make them a thicket,
and wild animals will devour them.

13 I will punish her for the days
she burned incense to the Baals;
she decked herself with rings and jewelry,
and went after her lovers,
but me she forgot,"
declares the LORD.

14 "Therefore I am now going to allure her;
I will lead her into the desert
and speak tenderly to her.

15 There I will give her back her vineyards,
and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
There she will sing as in the days of her youth,
as in the day she came up out of Egypt.

16 "In that day," declares the LORD,
"you will call me 'my husband';
you will no longer call me 'my master. '

17 I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips;
no longer will their names be invoked.

18 In that day I will make a covenant for them
with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air
and the creatures that move along the ground.
Bow and sword and battle
I will abolish from the land,
so that all may lie down in safety.

19 I will betroth you to me forever;
I will betroth you in righteousness and justice,
in love and compassion.

20 I will betroth you in faithfulness,
and you will acknowledge the LORD.

21 "In that day I will respond,"
declares the LORD—
"I will respond to the skies,
and they will respond to the earth;

22 and the earth will respond to the grain,
the new wine and oil,
and they will respond to Jezreel.

23 I will plant her for myself in the land;
I will show my love to the one I called 'Not my loved one.'
I will say to those called 'Not my people, ' 'You are my people';
and they will say, 'You are my God.' "

How do we know if should be waiting for God or if God is waiting for us?

Advent Resolution: Waiting

I learned on Sunday that waiting is a spiritual discipline. I never considered that before (but Foster didn't add into the Celebration of Discipline, so its not my fault). I feel like I've been trained to combat every problem in life with prayer and action, because if something is going wrong, we should fix it. To simply stop thinking, considering, trialing, creating, etc, and instead to just wait is a new concept.

This is a little dangerous isn't it? Maybe I'm afraid that waiting will lead to idleness, but maybe my fear is deeper than that. What if I'm really afraid to wait because I don't know what to wait for? What if I work not to keep me from being lazy, but what if I work because I'm not satisfied what God would have me wait for. So I work and imagine more and more in a vain attempt to find a conclusion that suits me.

I think that God does give us power to change things here on earth. I think God wants us to dream and hope for better than what we see. However, even in the midst of ministry and the love's best intentions there is room for patience. As a resoltion for this new year, I think that as I go into ministry I want to be guided by more than trial and error, and instead wait for God to reveal opportune moments through the Holy Spirit for me to act in. After all it's God, not I, that is mighty to save.

I'm trying to learn: How do we wait? Please contribute.

Psalm 131

1 My heart is not proud, O LORD,
my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters
or things too wonderful for me.
2 But I have stilled and quieted my soul;
like a weaned child with its mother,
like a weaned child is my soul within me.

3 O Israel, put your hope in the LORD
both now and forevermore.

Because of Winn-Dixie

Friday at the elementary school I borrowed the book, Because of Winn-Dixie. I read it Saturday morning, and I was actually quite pleased with myself because I've never finished a whole book like that in a morning. It didn't occur to me until after I'd finished it that all I'd managed to do was read a 183 page book that was relatively the same size as my hand,size 12 font and double spaced proving to me and every one who questioned that I indeed had surpassed the fourth grade reading level.

None the less I thoroughly enjoyed the book and I got a lot out of it. I think I may read some more children's books because I figure that everything you teach children is more or less everything worth knowing. Maybe I can finish the Chronicles of Narnia (or as I like to call them the Chronicles of gnar gnar- silent "g" of course) over break.

Anyway Because of Winn-Dixie has this interesting quote that spoke to me, "Gloria says that you can't hold on to anything. That you can only love what you've got while you've got it" (DiCamillo 167). I feel like we know that nothing lasts forever so a lot of my love may be motivated by making people want to stick around more. But I'm being taught how to love people not because I want them to stay, but just because they are there. I want to be more aware of what/who I've got and how to best love them and enjoy them for the sake of the moment.

The book also makes me want a dog.