Waiting...
Waiting...
We love to do it don’t we? Not so much. I hate waiting whether it’s at Starbucks, or the post office - those lines are always long. Maybe for you it’s the car pool line or sitting in any traffic really. Nothing brings out the impatience in me more.
Imagine waiting for some hundreds of years for something? I know...you don’t want to. Well, that was the circumstance for our people, the people of God for generation after generation after generation...after hearing these words from the prophets all they got from God was silence for four hundred years.
This cryptic language from the prophets about shoots of Jesse, and cows and bears sharing the same feeding trough, and babies playing with cobras - it was all they had to go on for four centuries.
This was waiting on the soul level - a longing from their hearts to hear from God. Another prophet even called it a famine because they were so hungry to hear from God and they were beginning to doubt if He was still there.
We can relate, in a sense, to that kind of waiting, can’t we? I know in my life that gap between what’s been promised and experiencing it includes some of the most intense wrestling with God and questioning of Truth. I ask questions like:
“Where are You?”
“Do You still love me?”
“If You are a good God, why don’t You step in and stop this?”
As they questioned and waitied, they had to be singing “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” with every bit of longing that any of us can imagine.
O come, o come Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel.
They were ordinary people, just like you and me; they knew the Truth of what He had promised, to send a Light into the darkness; but they hadn’t yet experienced it, so they waited...
Fortunately for you and me, we don’t have to wait that long to hear the next part of the story...
