Day 23: Waiting

And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.

Luke 2:52

The words concluding the second chapter of Luke’s gospel offer a prelude of what is to come. Jesus, the Messiah, is being prepared, He is growing. It will be decades before the Father wills Him to step into His public ministry. The gap between the boy Jesus astonishing the teachers in the temple, to teaching his own disciples would be a delay of nearly twenty years. Jesus waited.

We find ourselves in a state of waiting, it feels like the preponderant  part of life. We wait for the advent of Christ, while waiting on so many other things. The other things, more often than not, occupy the greater part of our attention and anticipation.  The perceived delay in the unfurling of God’s plan allows for seasons of much distraction. We find ourselves frayed and fragile, hanging on to our deferred hopes by some tenacity of will. 

This is, of course, not the kind of waiting modeled by Immanuel. He was waiting and growing, waiting and preparing, waiting and communing. We can be fragile and frayed while also faithful to His will and ways in our lives. While hard to presently imagine, our ultimate purposes are likely yet to come. Our seasons are presently fruitful while also ordained preparations and processes for future ministries on either side of the coming and current kingdom. We so often bemoan the process, yet it is the process itself which is bringing glory to our Father, which is our primary purpose.