Christmas is next Tuesday! Are you ready?

All the decorating is done, right? And the gifts are purchased and wrapped and under the tree or in the mail, right? Your Christmas cards are in the mail. The goodies are all baked and the menu is planned and dishes have been delegated. And you’ve considered alternative dishes for people with food sensitivities or to compensate for that jello salad that Great Aunt Mabel always brings that you’re pretty sure hasn’t been refrigerated and is spoiled and you know people will put a spoonful of it on their plates and not eat it just because no one wants to offend her because heaven help us all if we offend Great Aunt Mabel because we don’t want to deal with her passive-aggressiveness today of all days!

Did I just stress you out?

I think I stressed myself out.

If this year is anything like years past, I’ll be lucky to get my Christmas cards in the mail by New Year’s Eve. I’ll be down to the wire finishing a couple of handmade Christmas gifts. And I don’t really want to talk about the state of the cookies or the anxiety surrounding family get togethers this year.

And, if I’m uber honest, my life looks nothing like Pinterest or a Hallmark Christmas movie. Well, maybe the Hallmark Christmas movie with the accident prone heroine or the one who finds herself stranded somewhere because she has amnesia. Not that I have amnesia or anything. It’s just that it’s a good description of how I feel inside sometimes. I feel like I’ve forgotten who I really am or who I was really meant to be. That, or I just accidentally hit my shoulder on the door jamb as I walked through the doorway. There’s a reason I find bruises on my calves and have no idea where they came from.

Really, though, reality is nothing like Pinterest all of the time. Just part of the time. But Pinterest makes me feel like I can make anything beautiful. I can find recipes and decorating tips. I just shouldn’t expect all of life to look that perfect.

And life isn’t like a Hallmark Christmas movie either. But those movies make me feel more like Christmas. And they make me feel hope and joy. They make me feel like anything is possible this time of year. And everything works out in 90 minutes all neatly tied up in a big Christmas bow and everyone is blissfully happy and loving each other (even the really mean girl).

No. Life isn’t perfect. Honestly, it sucks sometimes. And I just wish that sometimes God would just tell me what I’m supposed to do, like in a dream or vision or something, when I have to make a big decision. Or maybe he’d part a sea of traffic. Or miraculously heal that relative with cancer or dementia or ALS. Or just hurry up already with keeping a promise he made to me. After all, it’s been how many years?

God does do things in his own time, I know. It just doesn’t seem soon enough or fast enough, you know?

I know I can’t be the only one who feels like this.

This impatience in the waiting.

This wanting to be somewhere else already.

This not getting the miracle yet.

Or maybe I’m not seeing the miracle.

I don’t know.

Waiting is hard.

I’d like to think that I’ve nothing to learn from the waiting. I’m already there.

Oh how I wish that were true. I want to be whole. I don’t want the pain, the ache of the waiting, the struggle of right now.

I know I am not alone. I’m sure you can relate. If you’re not there right now, you have been before.

And since the beginning of time here on this Earth when Adam and Eve messed up, people waited and waited and waited for the one that God promised would come to save them.

And people through the Old Testament in the Bible kept looking forward and waiting. And God would talk to some people during that time. That’s where all the prophecies about Jesus come from in the Old Testament.

And then God was silent. That time period there in between the two testaments, between Malachi and Matthew. That was 400 years.

400 years!

With nothing recorded as being words from God.

And I thought that having a prayer go unanswered for over 2 years was a long time for God to seem silent about something. (And he still hasn’t answered that prayer.)

I guess that’s what this season is all about, though, the waiting. God’s people waited thousands of years for God to keep his promise. And we have no written record of any message from God to his people for 400 years before Jesus was born.

And then, finally!

An angel appears to a teenage girl named Mary to tell her that she was going to get pregnant and have a baby–the Son of God, the Savior, Jesus. (Check out Luke 1 for the story.)

And when her fiance, Joseph, hears about it, he wants to break off the engagement quietly. But an angel comes to him in a dream to tell him about Mary and her baby–Jesus, to save the people from their sins. (Check out Matthew 1 for this story.)

That baby was Jesus, the one who saves, Emmanuel–God with us.

Galatians 4:4

But when the right time came, God sent his Son

Isaiah 7:14

All right then, the Lord himself will give you the sign. Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel (which means ‘God is with us’).

Maybe that knowing will help in the waiting. Maybe…. Lord, may it help in the waiting.