The Peace of Discomfort: Luke 1: 39-56
I remember growing up we used to vacation at Dollywood every year. Don’t judge now—I love Dolly! One of my favorite things to do as a kid was ride the rides. And so, the kids and a couple adults in the family would run from ride to ride and gather up at the back of the line. Then…we’d wait. Slowly, inch by inch, the line would move until you reached this point of overexcitement from anticipation and unending irritation at having to wait. Waiting is no fun. Waiting challenges our peace in life.
Watch hungry people wait for the food while the kitchen at the restaurant is backed up. It takes no time at all for the hangry to change their whole personality. And if someone who ordered after you gets their food first? Time to pray up a hedge of protection for somebody. Watch people stuck in traffic in Henry County driving forward on the interstate at 5 miles per hour. Twenty minutes in you find out just how many swear words and lane-weaving skills your driver knows. Waiting does not come easy to us. It challenges our peace and leaves us with this overwhelming sense of discomfort and displeasure.
And yet, sometimes, waiting is the most powerful thing we can do. I believe we get bothered by waiting because we believe it’s useless, wasting time, and a completely pointless task. We are trained to be people who are doing something. We glance at phones, watch the tv, listen to music, listen to audio books, anything we can do to distract us from those times and places where we have to sit in the stillness and wait. It eases the discomfort…filling in that silence with something even if it’s just a mindless distraction.
Yet God often makes us wait. The people in ancient times waited for a Messiah. For many years, God was silent There is almost 400 years of prophetic silence between Malachi and Matthew. And in that time, the people had no choice but to wait for God to speak. They performed the rituals, did their best to keep the faith, and waited for a Messiah.
In fact, sometimes, our best lessons are learned during the long and difficult waiting periods. Mary and Elizabeth understood waiting. An angel appeared and made this sweeping prophecy about the birth of a herald and the birth of a Savior. It was a moment of awe, amazement, and holiness in both their lives. But what happened next? They waited. It takes close to three-quarters of a year for a baby to be born. They waited. But in their waiting, something miraculous and holy was about to happen.
Waiting should never be filled with a sense of nothingness. Waiting, as Fr. Henri Nouwen says, should be filled with promise and action. This is not idle action of doodling on your phone or watching 30 hours of television. Waiting becomes powerful and peaceful to us when there is a sense of promise and purpose. Elizabeth and Mary could endure the long months of pregnancy because there was the promise of a Savior to be born. They believed and trusted in the words God has spoken through the angel. Mary says in her song of praise, “For [the Lord] made this promise to our ancestors, to Abraham and his children forever.”
When we wait for the Lord, we always wait with a promise. If we are sick, we wait with the promise of healing or resurrection. If we are hurting, we wait with the promise of a God who loves us. If we are wandering in a life of sin and rebellion, we wait with the promise that God’s love can change the hardest heart right down to the most minor of affronts. If we are waiting for love, we have the promise of Immanuel, God with us. With God in our lives, our waiting is never in vain, for God waits with us full of promise and steadfast with a holy presence.
But we also wait with purpose. Mary foreshadows in her heart and mind the purpose of her child: mercy from generation to generation, bringing down the proud, greedy, and exploitive ones, honoring the humble, meek, and lowly. She sings this song of a coming work and purpose. She is waiting to raise this child who would one day be the lasting example of God’s love and the deliverer of humankind.
We read near the end of the Luke 2 scripture on Jesus’s birth that Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. I believe she pondered and knew—the holiness, the miraculous, the teaching, the example, the suffering, the agony, the death, and the everlasting hope. I believe from what she sings here that all of this holy and miraculous plan was on her mind and in her heart. She was waiting with purpose—to deliver a child who would deliver us and her in turn. She understood that her obedience and willingness to follow God would bring us the miraculous.
Too often, we see waiting as wasted time. And I believe that sometimes we talk ourselves out of a good and fruitful waiting period. We say there’s nothing happening, that we’re too old, too helpless, too busy, too inexperienced, too set in our ways for something this new and different. Sometimes we talk ourselves right into the very discomfort we believe waiting brings. But Mary and Elizabeth waited with the promise of a Savior and deliverance. They waited with purpose that they would birth both the preparation and the redemption of the world. They waited, knowing that God would take these children and, in their adulthood, work the miraculous, the redemptive, and the holy. For them, all of that promise and purpose was most definitely worth waiting for.
Waiting does not come easily to us. The other day I got to wait in line to vote with Kathy for close to an hour. I didn’t have my phone, didn’t bring a book, and had about a teaspoon full of patience left. But instead of focusing solely on the fact that I had to wait. I began to ask why I was waiting as I shuffled through the line. It was like milling through those old theme park lines as a child, only instead of a fun ride you get to vote again for one of the two people you probably voted for about six weeks ago. Adulthood tends to sap the fun out of things like that, doesn’t it?
But when we find ourselves waiting, focus in on the why—the purpose and the promise that is coming. Waiting will never become easy. It will always bring some level of physical discomfort or the increasing noise of impatience. But as we turn our hearts to the promise and the purpose, the why, of waiting, we will find that even in the midst of our discomfort, God will give us peace.
Worship Video: https://www.facebook.com/fccmacon/videos/888852195614372