The Best Kind of Waiting

“While you are waiting…

regard the patience of our Lord as salvation”

2 Peter 3:14a, 15a

We are in a season of waiting.

Advent is a four-week period of time when we long for God to break into creation again. Unlike persons who lived before the time of Christ and awaited the Messiah’s appearance, Christians trust God’s promise was fulfilled with an amazing birth at Bethlehem. Still we wait for the kind of world God has always intended and for the return of one who spent his first night in a manager.

These weeks include other forms of waiting, too. 

For little ones, the wait until Christmas can seem endless. For persons in educational settings the delay in this season is the three weeks or so of school days that must pass before a holiday break. For others yet, the main form of waiting is for the arrival of loved ones or a time away from work routines. Whatever the particular ways you are in a kind of holding pattern today, the question I pose is the same: “How well are you waiting?”

As you ponder that question, let me share the image of someone who I think waited in style.

It came on a day many years ago when Lori and I went to a mall to do some Christmas shopping. It was a mild day for December and as we stepped from our car, I noticed this man waiting in the parking lot in one of those diagonally-striped places between spaces. I don’t know who had accompanied him to the mall, yet he had come prepared as he sat in a reclining beach chair reading a newspaper. A radio sat atop a cooler. If he had had an extension cord long enough or a generator, he probably would have been watching tv, too. And if he had brought an extra chair, I might have joined him! Yet while cars all around were circling for a parking space and countless other shoppers frantically hurried inside to get started on their lists, this man was calmly sitting in the parking lot. He had no idea as to when his companion would return, but was prepared to make the most of his wait.

Not only does his approach offer a good image for us as this season begins, but it also connects to the Scripture verse we read above. To be sure, Peter was not concerned with shopping or parking lots. Yet he does tell a group of first century Christians how they might best wait.   

The 3rd chapter of Second Peter is focused on the return of Christ. By the time of that letter, fifty years or so had passed since Jesus walked the earth. Christians knew of his promised return and the expectation had arisen in the early church that the Second Coming would occur during their lifetime. Thus, when the first Christians began to die without any evidence that Jesus had yet come back, a crisis arose. In response, some began to wonder if they had misunderstood Jesus while others said he would never return. Peter set out to correct such thinking. 

“Do not ignore this one fact,” he wrote “that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.”  Peter was suggesting the reason Christ had not yet returned was both because God’s timing is different from human counting, but also because God wanted everyone present for eternity. Thus, people needed extra time to get their lives in order.

The writer went on to point out that the wait would eventually end and when it finally started would then unfold quickly. “Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way,” Peter asked “what sort of persons ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God?” He then answered his own question, “while you are waiting…strive to be found by him at peace without spot or blemish; and regard the patience of the Lord as salvation.”

Peter was seeking to bring comfort to early Christians in a matter of great significance, as he patiently addressed the confusion and uncertainty over the delay in Christ’s return. As part of that response, he wanted to leave no doubt that Jesus eventually would come back and that it gave them more time to grow in faithfulness. He hoped that such reassurance could change the character of that delay and their response.         

While we wait, his words suggest that it can be marked by a kind of peaceful confidence, too, that no matter what else is occurring in our lives, we remain confident of Jesus’ return. And that in these weeks and every season of life we seek to grow in faithfulness, love, and service.

So that whether the Second Coming happens during this Advent or not, we remain confident in his abiding peace and “regard the patience of our Lord as salvation.”  Something to remember and hold onto while at home and even in a parking lot.    

Emmanuel, as I await your return, help me to celebrate your patience and timing once more. Using these days to let your words and example more fully shape my choices. Amen.