Maybe you noticed it, but I’m guessing it slipped by because quite honestly the idea didn’t even occur to me until I struggled to title week three. From the start, I knew I wanted each piece of “Advent: the weight of waiting” to be one single word. The first two came to me right away, but I stared and stared, read and re-read the writing for week three and couldn’t find the one-word summary. As I walked back and forth in my living room, throwing out ideas that would follow weeks one and two and build toward week four, which I already knew, one word came to mind.
A different word. Not for week three… but for the entire series.
Suddenly there it was… an acronym, weeks blending into the next, an unseen story that’s entirely on “theme.” The weight of waiting is heavy and gets heavier by the day, the month, the year, the seasons stretching on. When the wait has been long and the miracle seems slow in its coming, the weight only grows. But it was never late.
What we sing on Easter Sunday might seem nearly impossible to declare in the long, dark night—but it remains just as true: the end is written, Jesus Christ my living hope.
Maybe we should sing it on Christmas, too.
At the start, in the announcement for this new Advent collection, I shared the unexpected and unplanned connection between the two series of 2024.
Holy Week: here in the week of it all
Advent: the weight of waiting
Holy Week begins with the words “here… still… waiting” and literally ends with how God is “Here. Now. Always.” But if we back up just a smidge, this is the finale, the close that’s actually a beginning:
“Our eyes may be clouded with tears, our mind full of questions and our hands full of worries, but we are invited to show up exactly as we are. Come when it’s dark and you don’t know where else to go. Come with your grief, your doubt, your confusion and fears. Jesus won’t run away; He won’t disappear. Instead, He comes close. He meets us in the muchness, sees us in our sadness, and promises to turn every grave into a garden.
Hope, broken and buried like a seed.
Hope, alive and breathing and calling our name.
Hope, even now turning every Friday Good.
What a day. What a sacrifice. What a gift. What a love. What a friend.
Emmanuel, God with us.
Here. Now. Always.”
When I wasn’t sure if I’d have the bandwidth to write the Advent series, when I didn’t know if my health would hold, after months of the title “the weight of waiting” sneaking into my thoughts, I purposely slipped it into an October post. Maybe I’d be able to write the series, maybe it would need to be paused until 2025, but the phrase wouldn’t let me go so I let it go. I just didn’t realize the call-back, didn’t remember that the Holy Week series wrapped up with words about hope like a seed, until I began to write the announcement.
That same seed idea came back with yet another surprise as I walked five steps and turned around, again and again and again, slowly wearing a path across the living room rug.
Week one: Silence…
Week two: Low…
The weight of waiting…
Hope like a seed…
WAIT a second.
All along, there’s been so much more going on. The entire way through, the season of Advent and Scripture as a whole, a thread is woven across the pages. Underneath it all, another story, a deeper truth, is taking root and growing growing growing until one day a seed breaks and look, here it is at last!
Silence
Low
Overstory
Watch
Slow.
When it seems like God has gone missing…
When we’re at an all-time personal low and our weariness is at an all-time high…
When our days are overwhelming and our hearts are heavy…
When the dark has stretched on and we’re desperate for dawn…
When the wait is long and the weight is heavy… there is still hope. It may be as small as a seed but it will holds steady… and like a seed, well, who can fully imagine the beauty and life to come.
I’ll be the first to readily and emphatically say that no, God’s timing doesn’t match my own and yes, in my limited knowledge I’d be thrilled if He would hurry up the healing. Bring on the restoration, God. Pour out long-awaited miracles and mend what is broken and do what literally only You can do at this point. I’m weary and worn out and worn down, but I’m waiting and I’m watching and I’m not at all worried You can't do it… I’m just wondering when You will. Will today be the day? Tomorrow? Four years from now? Surely not 400. I mean, I could go another 400 days if it were a guarantee but instead You’re just whispering “may hope be a seed” and what am I to do with that except plant and water and trust and keep on watching through the long wait?
But of course, there it is. The reminder that beautiful things can come from broken things, like a seed that splits so a shoot can rise. The reminder that I don’t actually understand the timing of, well, anything really, but I’m held by the One who holds time itself. The reminder that once upon a time, those hands belonged to One who was mistaken—except not really—as a Gardener.1 And why am I suddenly crying and why am I surprised when it’s right there at the beginning and again at the end: Our God can be found in a garden, at work even now breathing life in what is dead2, bringing beauty from what is broken, seeing us in our lowest places and calling us by name.
What seems like a delay is not necessarily a denial. He isn’t slow in His coming, He is sure in His coming… it’s just that His timing is not our own.
God seems to delight in the details, is forever noticing the unseen, often chooses the overlooked and forgotten, and usually writes a story that seems so wildly unexpected and odd that it makes no sense at all until we have the gift of time and then, aha, yes, I see! Except even then, only in part.3 Even then, only a glimpse. They didn't expect a child; they anticipated a King. They didn’t picture a cross; they imagined a crusade. They didn’t call Friday Good and they didn’t understand the weight and the silence of Holy Saturday was something they’d choose again and again in every scenario if it meant Sunday would be Sunday and Easter would arrive.
The One who was wrapped in cloth and laid in a hollowed out stone at birth and again at death is the same One who spoke a word and the sea stilled, the same One who fed thousands with a prayer and stopped the bleeding that had flowed for fourteen years, the very same One who chose silence and laid low and let the overstory be one of obscurity as He experienced all that we did so that One day it could be true—He can sympathize with all we walk through because He Himself has known and felt it too4. That God, our God, could have made a way any other way. But as the line goes, the lyrics to one of my favorite Christmas songs, saved on purpose for today as we examine the thread of S L O W …
He could have saved us in a second… Instead He sent a child. The Infinite became a finite infant. The God of all greatness chose to become fragile and small. The Creator of every good thing humbled Himself to become so very, very human.
May hope be… a seed.
His timing is not our own, but He will keep His word. He will not leave us to carry the weight of a long wait alone. It’s in His name. It’s who He is. In every season, in every situation, God with us always.
The baby in the manger is for you. Emmanuel, come to you. Come for you. For the worn out, the strung out, the walked out on. For the doubting and disappointed, slow dancing with question marks and a hundred unknowns. For the outraged, the outcast, and the all out of sorts. For the discouraged and the desperate, barely holding onto hope like a tiny candle flickering in the dark of a silent night. For the lonely, the low, the longing, the lost. For the weary and the still waiting, watching for spring in the middle of a seemingly endless winter.
Emmanuel, God come to us.
Emmanuel, God with us.
Emmanuel, God for us.
Us, the angry and confused.
Us, the exhausted and grieving.
Us, the overwhelmed and heartbroken.
Emmanuel, God made flesh.
Emmanuel, moving right into the neighborhood.
Emmanuel, staying with us in all our humanness.
Always. All days. Emmanuel, the God who can’t be confined to a calendar page. He isn’t done working. Our hope is not in vain.
Relax, everything’s going to be alright; rest, everything’s coming together; open your hearts, Love is on the way. Jude 1:2
A prayer for Christmas…and always:
Jesus, it seems like you so often take your time. You’re quick to be patient and slow to be hurried and honestly God, sometimes I really want to speed things up. Turn the page, figure out xyz, see the seasons change. I want prime shipping on a miracle but You, the One who created and holds all of time, stepped into time so that we wouldn’t be bound by it. You’re good with slow and great at the long game… Show me how to keep watch through the night, to trust You in the winter, to wait and plant and prune and water and tend and believe that harvest is on the way. You won’t be rushed, but you also won’t be late. It’s right there in your name, and the Word keeps His word so I’m banking on it: Emmanuel, always. Good and faithful and true and here here here always here. On every page. In every season. You’re the God who came and the God who stays. A miracle swaddled in a manger, arriving in the deep dark, later wrapped again in a tomb… to break night, to unbind time, to make a way. Help me trust Your clock, your story, your view, your kind and perfect timing.
Before I share the final song to sit with + verse to meditate on + bonus lock screen (Well, I suppose all of this one is an extra. So much for sticking with 4 emails, why not 5?! 😂) a personal note from me—