Waiting for Christmas

Have you ever had a hard time being patient in December? As a child, I was always impatient to see what presents were hiding under the tree –especially in the extra-large gift bags Gramma always gave us. Now that I’m an adult, I get impatient to see how my loved ones will react to the gifts I’ve found for them. And as a teacher, I’ve noticed that my students and I share an impatience for Christmas break to begin, and we all get more and more excited as the number on our countdown gets lower.

In a way, it’s quite special to have to wait for Christmas. The anticipation of something grand and wonderful helps us to understand how the Israelites must have felt as they longed for and anticipated the coming of the Messiah.

In their case, the waiting often lasted their whole lifetime, as generation after generation “died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.” (Hebrews 11:13)

And yet, when He did come, many missed it. They were expecting the promise to be fulfilled in a certain way: they had imagined it all out, perhaps, and were looking for what they thought the coming of the Messiah would be like.

I think we are often the same way. We imagine out what we think our Christmas should look like, we look for it to be that way, and get so wrapped up in our own idea of Christmas that we miss what it’s all about.

Listen to Galatians 4:4-5. “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law; to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.”

As you wait to experience all the good things of this Christmas season, let your waiting remind you of those long ages God’s people waited for the Messiah, and remember with delight and wonder the reason of His coming.

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)