I'm Ready! Series

Christmas Is Coming!

Pt. 2 - I'm Ready

I. Introduction

Christmas stockings. Lights. Bright bows. Ornaments. Family pictures. Carols. Last week we talked about how Christmas can slip up on you. A sudden and drastic change in season. Mary experienced this. No warning. Just minding her own business and then without any time to prepare her entire world is upended and changed. Mary helped us learn how to navigate a season filled with change. All of the sudden and drastic change is hard to navigate, can cause our world to seem to spin out of control and at times is very hard to accept. However, what I have discovered is that there is in fact a season that may be even more difficult and challenging. That is a season where there is no apparent or perceived change! We grow tired of routine. We feel like we are in a rut which has been defined as nothing more than a grave with the ends knocked out. We clock in. We clock out. We work. We sleep. We work. We church. We school. We sports. We do it on repeat. We are worn out from sameness. We long for variety. We want a detour and instead all we seem to get is delay. You would think we would be better at waiting since . . .

A report from a few years ago said that on average, we spend six months sitting at stoplights. We spend approximately 6 months of our lives waiting in line for things, over 5 years waiting in lines, 13 hours annually waiting on hold for a customer service, and 38 hours each year waiting in traffic.

That is why it is interesting to me that although the Christmas account certainly deals with how Mary and Joseph frantically try to wrap their heads around all of this change Scripture also details others in this same account who are enduring an entirely different reality. Instead of too much change, they are in a prolonged season of no change.

Text: Luke 2:21-24, 36-38 (MSG)

When the eighth day arrived, the day of circumcision, the child was named Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived. Then when the days stipulated by Moses for purification were complete, they took him up to Jerusalem to offer him to God as commanded in God’s Law: “Every male who opens the womb shall be a holy offering to God,” and also to sacrifice the “pair of doves or two young pigeons” prescribed in God’s Law.

Anna the prophetess was also there, a daughter of Phanuel from the tribe of Asher. She was by now a very old woman. She had been married seven years and a widow for eighty-four. She never left the Temple area, worshiping night and day with her fastings and prayers. At the very time Simeon was praying, she showed up, broke into an anthem of praise to God, and talked about the child to all who were waiting expectantly for the freeing of Jerusalem.

If anyone should have grown tired of waiting it was surely Anna. Notice what the text says about her. Some translations say she was a widow for 84 years after 7 years of marriage. If she was 14, as was the custom, when she married, she would have been 105 years old. Other translations like the NIV indicate she was 84, but the point is the text says she was "very old." She experiences a season of sudden change. Loss. Then she enters this prolonged, drawn out, never ending period of waiting. 84 years of day and night fasting and praying in the Temple. Text says she never left day or night. It reminds me of walking through the tunnels of the excavations that Israel is doing of the Temple Mount. In the tunnels you find older ladies with their faces buried into the rock walls praying. Calling out to God for salvation and rescue. Day and night. Always there. Anna has learned the lessons of waiting. Her season of no change teach us several valuable lessons that we must learn to navigate these types of season in our own lives.

1. The willingness to wait is a revelation of our trust.

The lack of progress. Unfulfilled promises. Passing months. Time ticking. The only thing that may cause more panic, anger, frustration, and sleepless nights than too much change is not enough! When we don't see change we get antsy, agitated and like Abraham and Sarah who grew tired of waiting, we make mistakes. If we are unwilling to wait, then we unwilling to trust. When we take matters in own hands and we are saying that we don’t think we need God's hands.

We sing we will wait on you but what we really mean is we will wait on you until the end of this service. We don't mean we will wait on you until the end of the season. Our trust level is on a time clock. Our tendency to jump the gun literally declares that our calendar is more God than God. In fact, we want God to bow down to our time frame.