Do you remember being young and unable to sleep in anticipation of Christmas? Do you remember the deep groaning desire for December 25th? Do you remember that agony of waiting? Now maybe our reasons for waiting back then weren't exactly holy and pure (more presents anyone?) but there is something essential to the Christian life we miss when we forget to wait. The act of waiting forms us and focuses us. It is an act of hope. Kester Brewin has some great thoughts on the subject in his book The Complex Christ:

"Before the Church can change, before I can change, before anything changes, comes waiting.

A pause. A rest...

It is difficult to write about waiting; we turn from Malachi to Matthew without a thought... We read from Matthew 1.24 to Matthew 1.25 with no pause for breath, when perhaps we should also symbolically stop, hold our breath and consider the unwritten wait - Mary's nine months of pregnancy, skipped over. How did she feel? Excluded? Rejected? Shunned? Frightened? Excited? We simply do not know. All we know is that she descended the small peak of her simple girlhood into the valley and clouds of unknowing, the mystery of her faith apparent in her certainty of the higher peaks she could not yet see. Perhaps we should insert blank pages between these unpaginated moments, pages we would have to turn so that our thoughts might turn too and consider these punctuation marks, where God stops and waits before birthing something new."

(HT: Brad)

Hopefully in this unfortunately chaotic season you're able to take some time to stop, sit, wait, anticipate and in doing so join with the Israelites who waited for so long without hearing God's voice until John the Baptist or with Mary who waited for 9 months for Jesus, all the while being outcast from society for being pregnant outside of marriage. Advent is about waiting. Waiting is about spiritual formation. Stop...... Wait......