"Celebrating Advent means learning how to wait. Waiting is an art which our impatient age has forgotten. We want to pluck the fruit before it has had time to ripen. Greedy eyes are soon disappointed when what they saw as luscious fruit is sour to the taste. In disappointment and disgust they throw it away. The fruit, full of promise, rots on the ground. It is rejected without thanks by disappointed hands.
The blessedness of waiting is lost on those who cannot wait, and the fulfillment of the promise is never theirs…
Who has not felt the anxieties of waiting for the declaration of friendship or love? The greatest, the deepest, the most tender experiences in all the world demand patient waiting…
Not all can wait—certainly not those who are satisfied, contented, and feel that they live in the best of all possible worlds! Those who learn to wait are uneasy about their way of life, but yet have seen a vision of greatness in the world of the future and are patiently expecting its fulfillment. The celebration of Advent is only possible to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come.”
(Edwin Robertson, ed. and trans., Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christmas Sermons, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 20-21).
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3 comments:
i like your labels here, three that could be permanently put on my box o life, in that order: christmas, suffering, waiting.
Mine, too, Holly. Mine, too.
i just got an email from voices of the martyrs: SEnd a free copy of Tortured for Christ to your friends for christmas!!
ho ho ho!:)
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