Wait For It

Oh the joy on Christmas morning! My seven-year-old niece squealed excitedly when she opened her doll. Her apathetic teenage brother may not have gushed with animation when he opened his new laptop, but if the amount of time he has spent on it for the past two days is any indication, he loves it as much as she loves her doll.

But the anticipation is over now. The preparation has morphed into clean-up, like Mike Rowe's dirty job after the Tournament of Roses parade. Rolls of fancy paper are reduced to landfill. For some people the tree is already put away and normal life has resumed.

And yet we wait for the next big thing. Next week I'll write about the mid-winter, post-holiday blahs, but for today I want to write about the end of waiting.

Advent was all about the waiting. The anticipation, the preparation of heart and home, the hope of a Savior.

At Christmas He came.

He will come again.

Now the waiting is different. I heard it said once that we are living in the Saturday, the day between Christ's death and His resurrection.

....um, wrong holiday?

No, now is the perfect time to remember where we are and what has been promised. We look back at the year ending and look forward to the year about to begin. We remember lost loved ones, horrific news cycles, and even the simple disappointments of a poor job review or broken heart. We were promised joy and we got this.

Habakkuk is one of those books of the Bible that needs a tab if we're ever going to find it, and flip slowly or you'll miss it altogether. But his message is no less powerful than the Gospels or Romans or Psalms. Habakkuk is living in a world gone mad with immorality and evil, and he wants to know what God is going to do about it. Habakkuk lays his questions before God and then says, "I will stand on my guard post, and station myself on the rampart; and I will keep watch to see what He will speak to me." Hab. 2:1

How do we respond to this world that isn't any less mad than his? We wait, expecting God to respond, and doing what He has told us to do. God has told us to share the gospel: the truth of who we are, who He is, and what He has already done to reconcile the two. God has told us to love: God and family and those who don't deserve it. Don't give up doing right just because the rest of the world seems wrong.

God does answer Habakkuk, and Habakkuk's response is worship. "Though the fig tree should not blossom and there be no fruit on the vines...Yet I will exult in the LORD, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation." Hab. 3:17-19

The world is Jekyll and Hyde, and I can never remember which is the good one, and the world has forgotten, too, it seems. But God is still God, and He is always good.

And Jesus promised He will return at the appointed time, a time which only the Father knows, and until that time the Holy Spirit will be our comforter and our strength.

God's response to Habakkuk was recorded in Hab. 2:3 and following. The vision is for the appointed time, and it will not fail: "Though it tarries, wait for it; for it will certainly come, it will not delay."

Christmas is over but we still anticipate. Christ came once; He will come again. Wait for it.