What are We Waiting For?

There are weeks in December when everything seems to move faster — the cards to send, the gifts to wrap, the calendar bursting with obligations. We live in a world allergic to waiting. We tap our feet in grocery lines, sigh at red lights, and curse at spinning circles on our screens. We refresh, reload, restart, certain that the next thing — the next delivery, the next notification — will make us whole.

And yet Advent tells a different story. It insists that the peace Jesus is offering us cannot be rushed. It tells us that love, when hurried, loses its shape. It calls us to slow down long enough for hope to catch up.

Even in the waiting, God is already at work.

John the Baptist, who once stood so certain by the Jordan, is now sitting in a prison cell. His bold voice has gone quiet. Word reaches him that Jesus — the one he announced as Messiah — is not raising an…