Advent calendar

My wife, Tracy, and I were at the kitchen table one morning not long ago.

She was scrolling emails and I was scrolling The New York Times.

This is not antisocial behavior for us.

Tracy sips her orange juice and tells me about work situations that sprung up since the night before. She supervises a large staff, so work situations pop up like a 24-hour game of Whack-a-Mole.

I sip my coffee and read the news to her.

On this morning not long ago, I read her some news I thought she would like. A new COVID vaccine from the pharmaceutical company Pfizer was nearing government approval. The vaccine proved 90 percent effective at keeping people from getting COVID. The vaccine could be available within weeks.

I expected Tracy to get big eyes and say something like “that’s great!”

But she didn’t.

She got quiet. Her eyes pressed shut, her face scrunched up, her lips trembled, and her shoulders shook a little. Then big tears started rolling down her face.

I giggled. It’s a weird involuntary reaction I have when a person “ugly cries.” I know myself well enough to know that giggling is my body’s version of the emotional release that some people get from a good cry.

So there we sat with the news of a COVID vaccine coming soon. Tracy sobbed. I giggled.

At last, the advent could begin.

The Latin word adventus means “arrival” or “coming.” But what “advent” really means is waiting.

Advent is knowing that the object of your hope is coming, but waiting for it because it is not here yet.

Advent is bittersweet.

It is sweet because we can count down to an approximate time on the calendar. We can focus on the new life coming with a point on the horizon.

Anticipation can build into excitement.

What will you do when this pandemic is over?

My wife and I are already worried about the money we are going to blow on family vacations, restaurants, and season tickets to whatever Detroit sports team opens its season when crowds get the “all clear.”

Where will we find time for all of the church, dinner parties, playdates, and shopping trips that we will crave when this is over?

Sweet!

But the wait is also bitter because it is long. How many more months will we have to live every day and night inside the same 1400 square feet? How many more months will our lives seem like sim games we are playing on our screens? How many more months will “social distance” remind us of what and who we are missing?

How many more lives will come to ruin during the waiting?

How many more people will die?

Bitter.

The bittersweet wait for the end of the pandemic is a lesson and a reminder to Christians.

The call to a Christian life is a call to live in nonstop advent.

We are waiting for the Christ to come to “make all things new” (Book of Revelation 21:5).

No wonder it is so hard to be a Christian.

People make the mistake of thinking that “Christian morality” is what makes Christianity so hard.

But Christianity has never been about morality. It would be a lot easier and more people would do it if it was.

Christianity is hard because it is all about advent, all about waiting.

It is about having impossibly high hopes and not knowing when those hopes will become reality.

To be a Christian is to learn to live with waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

To be a Christian is to let the Spirit sanctify us with the waiting. It is to let her turn the bitterness of our waiting into something sweet. It is human nature to become reactive and selfish when we have to wait. But Christians make the choice to let their faith turn waiting into a time when the Spirit fills them with grace and kindness, joy and peace.

This pandemic is no gift from God, but God has always been in the habit of turning curses into blessings.

And one of the many blessings that God is making of this curse is a reminder to Christians that we are people of advent. We are a people who wait. If we already had, if we weren’t waiting, what would our faith be?

As this season of Christmas Advent begins, let Christians and those who seek Christ learn to wait again.

For it impossible to truly wait without faith, hope, and love growing within us. It is these three gifts the Spirit wants to lavish on us. They come to us in full only when we are living in waiting.

“I believe that I shall see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. Wait for the LORD; be strong and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!” (Psalm 27:13-14).

Grace and peace.