We wait. Thats what we do we wait. I feel that this advent the season of waiting, for Christmas--waiting for Christ. I wondered growing up what the people felt like waiting for a saviour, waiting for the one who would come to make all the wrong things right. But maybe this year, maybe this season I get it a bit more.Life is full of great--no wonderful things, moments, joy and love. In this world though we are all to aware of how things have gone wrong--terribly wrong and we desperately thirst for them to be made right. We know that aching hurt of loss from disease--heart disease, cancer, HIV, cancer. We know the void that is there when we lose someone to old age, accidents, --death. Too often we hear stories of tragedies from famine, to hurricanes, wars, shootings at elementary schools to young children claiming their own lives.
We wait. We wonder. We scream out loud until we feel again.
I look at this broken world and feel the pain it projects, how can it be this way? How can we hate so much? Some more than others it seems, take on more disappointment, suffering, and none of it makes sense.
In those moments it feels only natural for my mind to race through every possibility in ways that I can make the world right. If i donate this, or give that, or become a doctor, or let them live in my home, or move to...or write all these letters, if i fight....if I...if I....if I....if I what? Suddenly I believe I have the power to save the world? We are NOT called to take the pain away from the world. We are NOT called to fix the problems of the world...it is already done. Christ has done that, we are called to help make it better. We cannot take the pain away.
There are days when I cry. I cry so much for the things that are wrong, but I cry in pure thankfulness for the things that ARE RIGHT. I have my family. I HAVE my family. I have been blessed with an amazing family, a truly crazy-unbelievable-loving-caring-funny-close family. My family knows all too well how crazy, frustrating and annoying I can be, but they love me and have always accepted me, NOT my failures, but me for whatever I am.
I have them. I have my parents (who yes at moments drive me absolutely bat-shit crazy--but can also make me laugh, and joyful like no one else), I have two wonderful brothers and sister-in-laws, along with their children who are the little lights of my life including five nephews and one niece.Because of this I don't care that it might not be "cool" to go out for dinner with your parents, or going to the movies with your Dad instead of going downtown to Lamplighters on a Friday night. For me, if I lost my Mom, Dad or Brothers or suddenly found out my sister-in-laws or their kids were ill, I'd rather know that I spent the time with them. That I did not mock those opportunities.
Something I learned this year in the midst of my waiting for Christ to come to make this broken world new, is that the little things matter and the little things don't matter. Excuse me? Come again? Let me put it this way, the simple things that we worry about--do not matter in the end. The little moments with family, friends, the ones that make you smile and can tell a story saying " Remember when at Christmas we would re-arrange the NOEL candles to spell EL NO just to see how long it took Mom to notice and frustrate her?" those moments that make you laugh. The ones that remind us of hope, that things are not right at the moment, but they will be one day.
Please don't forget that there is Hope. There is always Hope. Hope is Real.
