Sharing the Gifts...Advent 2014

(This year's readings will be a posted here. We will combine the stories submitted with the blog entries. If you put your e-mail in the box to the right, the post will come to your in-box.)

Week One: The Gift of Waiting...      

God has the power to provide you with more than enough of every kind of grace. That way, you will have everything you need always and in everything to provide more than enough for every kind of good work.
2 Corinthians 9:7b-8 

Wait...

A young woman waits for a “career” job, working underpaid and over-bored to put food on the table. The unemployed wait for an offer, the underemployed for a better position, the underpaid for a better opportunity.

A couple waits to discover if they will be parents, a grandfather waits for diagnosis, a young mother waits for results that will show if chemo worked.

We all wait for political leaders to do their jobs, for the economy to recover, for medicines to take hold, for our next paycheck, for a loved one to get their act together.

Congregations wait for a new minister, new members, new ministries, new life, new hope in an uncertain time.

Waiting is as much a part of life as breathing.

We don’t do it well.

After God brought the people out of slavery in Egypt, through the wilderness and to Mt. Sinai where Moses was called up the mountain to receive God’s laws, the people simply couldn’t wait. At that time of new beginning, all that God had done was forgotten, or just pushed out of mind, while a new god was constructed.

“Well,” you can hear them say, “You shouldn’t have made us wait so long. We get a little crazy when we wait. We forget who we are, what we should be doing. We try to be our own gods. We think we can control life better than You.”

At this new beginning, the point at which we are eagerly looking for God’s promised salvation, God’s instruction to us is, “Wait.”

“Well,” you can hear us say. “You shouldn’t make us wait. There’s too much stress to wait. Anything might happen. It’s important to move things along, give us what we want.”

And God replies, “Wait.”

And so we do. The question is how. Can we wait with the promise that God will provide every kind of grace, and that grace will be more than enough for every kind of good work. During this Advent season, breathe in...breathe out...wait. God’s salvation will come. God’s grace is sufficient. Waiting is our gift.

God, enable to wait with a deep trust in your grace. Enable us to serve with the gifts you have given us. Enable us to see that we have all that we need to serve in your name. Amen.