It's the Waiting...

I'm excited for this weekend. The second in our Thoughtful Gifts series is coming (aren't you at least a little curious what Frankincense is all about?), the announcement I get to make about the food pantry is so cool, and the song right before the teaching will be...

But it's Christmas, so we have to wait. No peaking! No hints, no pinching the presents, no shaking the packages.

That's one place where Easter and Christmas are so different. Easter is a weekend, perhaps a whole week. Christmas is a season. It is weeks long, even if you have the patience to wait for Thanksgiving to be over before you start. We have a whole season of Christmas, which means a lot of waiting until the big day.

In some churches, they celebrate the waiting with the tradition of Advent, the time right before Christmas, leading up to and waiting for the coming Savior. Can you imagine, celebrating waiting? But we wait at Christmas. We wait through the season to the celebration. We wait to unwrap the gifts under the tree. We wait.

Just like the world waited for a Savior. Just like Israel waited for Messiah. Just like we wait today for the return of our triumphant King of Glory. Waiting isn't my favorite part, but it is a big part of Christmas and following Jesus.

Merry waiting. May the time we spend be time not wasted, but time invested in the now and coming Kingdom of God.