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.
Anna, waits. 84 years. Day after day. Week after week. Month after month. Year after year. Decade after decade. She waits. She trusts God's promise, but she also trusts His timing!
How many of us trust God for the promise, but we forfeit the promise because we make decisions that cost us the promise because we didn't trust His timing?
Listen, waiting isn't wasting! Waiting is only wasting if we don't wait correctly. Much of the waiting that occupies us is open ended. We wait for love and marriage without knowing if it will come. We wait for children without knowing whether we will conceive. We wait for justice. We wait for healing. So how do we wait in these seasons correctly?
There is a way to wait. Anna shows us how to wait.
2. We must wait actively.
Notice what the text tells us about how Anna waited.
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.
How do we wait actively?
We show up.
She waited faithfully. She never left. Day and night. Anna makes her greatest contribution at her weakest condition. You persevere by doing what you can, where you are, with what you have. At almost 100 years of age, there were some things Anna could not do that she once did, but Anna kept on doing what she could do. Too many of us during a long season of sameness allow what we can't do to keep us from doing what we can do. Show up.
We worship.
The wait didn't affect her praise. Do you remember we talked last week about what we do in the middle of change? We praise. Surprise . . . the same is true in wait. Why? Because whether we are swamped by change or sickened by sameness God's worthiness doesn't waver!
We watch and expect.
Anna expected to see the promise fulfilled. 84 years of waiting didn't cause her to hang her head, give up, close her eyes or her heart. Instead, she was watching and expecting so that when the day arrived, she perceives it. Anna probably battled poverty, loneliness, and depression, but she never lost hope in the God of Israel who loved her. She provides a powerful example to never give up. God's timing is perfect, and Anna waited faithfully on her God. She refused to buy the lie of the enemy that nothing was ever going to change. It was always going to stay this way. I will never see the promise fulfilled. Instead, after 84 years . . . 1,008 months . . .4,380 week . . . 30,660 days . . . 73,5840 hours she was in the right place at the right time because was in the place she always occupied watching and expecting God to fulfill His Word. St. Augustine understood this. He said, “If God seems slow in responding,” he wrote, “It is because He is preparing a better gift. He will not deny us. God withholds what you are not yet ready for. He wants you to have a lively desire for His greatest gifts. All of which is to say, pray always and do not lose heart.”
We must wait with hope! In Spanish, the word for “wait” is esperar. But it is also the root of the word esperanza — hope. The very act of waiting implies that some sort of payoff or fulfillment is coming.
So, I am here to encourage those of you who are holding on after days, weeks, months, years, decades of waiting . . . wait actively . . . Let hope arise. If He said, then He will do it . . . on His timetable but He will do it!
Paul encouraged us in Romans 8:24-25 - “For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.”
How do we wait? With hope, perseverance and eagerly. If you are in a prolonged season of no change, then I challenge you to wait actively . . .
Show up - hold on to your promise by holding onto your place.
Worship - hold on to your promise by keeping your eyes on the Promise Keeper.
Watch and expect! Hold on to your promise by perceiving what God is doing!
