Today is the first day of Advent. I sat in church today and held back tears. Another year has passed and still I wait impatiently for something I believe the Lord promised me. I have waited for over thirteen years for this thing, and I am no closer (in my sight) of receiving the promised gift than I was then. {Sorry not to be forthcoming on what I wait for – it is something simple really.} Some days the wait feels more than I can bear. It is my suffering, my thorny flesh. In these thirteen plus years, I’ve stopped seeing the promise come to pass in my mind’s eye.
Our Jesse tree, ready for Advent ornaments
Like Eve looking for fruit, I’ve doubted God’s words to me and heard the serpent hiss, “Did God really say?” Like Abraham, I’ve tried to connive ways to make the promise come to pass. Some days fulfillment seems close enough to taste, and yet my heart is like bitter gall when it slips away once again. I pray, I beg, and I plead, but nothing changes in the physical domain. So I stop living like I believe and start living like I don’t. Hope deferred makes the heart sick says Proverbs 13:12.
Advent though bids me see that men have waited for a great gift for a myriad of years longer than my mere thirteen. Many never saw the fulfillment and yet their faith and hope grew. In the waiting and longing and hoping, the Savior finally came. The promises were fulfilled, and hope grew even in the midst of hard places and hearts, amidst drought and loss, like Joseph’s brothers coming to him in need, hope grows.
We are all part of a greater story, God’s story
This year, I chose Yield Hope as my word of the year. Despite God’s good provision, sometimes, I lost sight of hope. In a year of yielding, I’ve written little and have been pruned a lot. I’m not sure I’ve produced any fruit at all, hope or other.
But, God shows us things we cannot see on our own.
Last year, I bought two Christmas cacti. They were full of blooms. Then I neglected them when it came time to move, and I thought they’d die. I love them so, but I’ve always had a hard time keeping them alive or blooming. In the new house, there was no good place to put them it seemed. So summer came, and I sat them outside, almost hoping and definitely expecting them to shrivel and die. Surprisingly to me, they kept living. I cleaned up their dead leaves, brought them in, found them a spot, and started caring for them with a little water and a little sun. One it seems decided to produce two blooms.
I’ve let lots of things die away this year. As I put up the Christmas tree today, those dead things made me sad. I didn’t want to remember them or their loss. Quite frankly, I have felt like a little stump, be it the Lord’s doing or my own. But I remembered the Christmas cactus blooms. Hope blossoms in unexpected desert places, even my soul. As advent bids me remember, the promised one did come and fulfill His promise, He will come again and fulfill the remainder of those same promises.
What God has promised me seems small in comparison, but Advent bids me remember that He cares about small promises and details, that small details are part of a larger story, and that I need to visualize the end result as having been fulfilled. With Christ, no hope is deferred. We need only have eyes to see fulfillment in desert places for blooms to grow under God’s great care. So tonight, instead of grieving the losses of promises unfulfilled, I envision receiving the crown of glory because it was.
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