What Are You Waiting For?

Children's Sermon - 11/29/2020

What is the worst place to be waiting? A stop light? The grocery check out? Covid testing?

Here is my least favorite place to wait: (show cartoon slide) the DMV!

Is there any place you DO enjoy waiting?

Most people don’t really like to wait anywhere.

Waiting means wasting time, doing nothing.

And according to Holly Whitcomb who wrote the book, Seven Spiritual Gifts of Waiting,

Waiting means a loss of control.

We are not in charge when we are waiting—someone else or some other process is.

Waiting is counter cultural.

It can be hard.

We all know how it is to wait right now:

Wait for a vaccine.

Wait to go back to in-person school.

Wait to hug a grandchild or see a beloved family member face to face.

Waiting to attend a sporting event or concert.

It isn’t easy, but it is necessary waiting.

Waiting can teach us patience and fortitude as we find our inner sources of strength.

Not all waiting is good

Sometimes waiting is procrastination or laziness

Sometimes waiting is resistance to necessary change

The value of waiting depends on what you are waiting for.

Today is the first Sunday of Advent, and one of the themes of Advent is WAITING.

We are waiting for Jesus.

Waiting not only for the celebration of his birth 2000 years ago

But also of his second coming, the time when Jesus returns to put all things to right.

As we pray the old Advent prayer, Come Lord Jesus, we our longing for the world as it should be grows.

We begin to imagine the world as it will be

And we find we are sustained and made stronger in our waiting.

In Advent, we light one candle at a time, a reminder we are not in control.

But there is One who is.

The One who can be trusted in all things.

The One who sent his only son Jesus into the world, to be light in our darkness,

To sustain us in our waiting.

So what are you waiting for?

This Advent, may you wait for Jesus, and in him, we find your hope, your future, and your present--

God’s kingdom. Amen.