PACKED AND WAITING

I'm not good at waiting. When I was a student at IU if the dinner line in the Willkie Quad was too long, I would choose to return to my room rather than wait and eat. Years before that I would wait impatiently for the record albums I had ordered from the Capitol Record Club to arrive. Day after day I would stop by the post office in our Alaskan village, and check mail box #550. The waiting was intolerable.

I'm not good at waiting and yet at the heart of Advent is the Biblical call to wait expectantly for the arrival of God. The God of Abraham, Sarah, Ruth, Isaac, and Jacob is a God who is on the move.

This December Sharon and I are waiting not just for the arrival of the Carpenter King, but we are waiting for the birth of a little boy. He will be the son of our youngest son, Michael, and his bride, Sarah. The boy's name, they decided long ago, will be Max. He is being named after my biological father. My Dad was a missionary teacher who died on the mission field and is buried in a place called Wymbo-Nyama.

The due date is immediately after Christmas. Sarah and Michael, who live near DePaul University in Lincoln Park, Chicago, are so ready for their son to arrive! The nursery is ready, the crib was long ago put together, the rocking chair is waiting, the car carrier has been purchased, and Max has a whole line of IU clothing ready to wear!

At a lunch put on by a United Methodist Women's circle this week, people asked, "What are you going to do if Sarah goes into labor on Christmas Eve? Will you go?"

I mumbled something about staying here to preach while Sharon drove north, and several people said, "You go! You hand the sermon to someone else and you go be where you need to be. You've got to be there...whenever it happens."

So our late December plans are a little "iffy." Other family members are coming in. Airline tickets have been purchased. But if Max decides to arrive, then we may well be headed north even as guests arrive. We'll abandon our Christmas tree, gifts here and some people we love very much, and head north...because we don't know when he is going to arrive.

This whole God thing, this Advent deal, is like this, I think. We are told to live with our bags packed, our shoes by the door, so that when God shows up we don't miss the holy, beautiful, world-changing thing that is happening.

Mark's Gospel begins (1:2-3, NRSV) with this quote from the prophet Isaiah: "See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'"

Are you ready for God's new thing in your life, even when God doesn't give you a specific date on the calendar?

In Christ and for Christ,

Mark Fenstermacher