Melissa Hofstetter continued our Advent journey by looking at Matthew 11: 2-11. She begins:

I don’t know about you, but I have a love-hate relationship with ambivalence. (…Mixed feelings about mixed feelings) Can any of you relate?

More likely, it’s maybe that I have a love-hate relationship
with Adventing — not with Christmas per se, or the Spirit of Giving, but I have mixed feelings about the Advent that is our lives. The Advent that we journey through as we wait for the fullness of the Kingdom’s in-breaking.
There’s just so much “NOT-YET,” mixed in with all the very real NOW — of Christ’s Reign here on earth.

On this, third Sunday of Advent, we’re invited to wait in Joy.

This year’s scripture passage is a little bit different….
It’s a different kind
of take on JOY, but I think that it also resonates with our Adventing reality. In our lives, as we listen to the daily news, we hear not so much “Joy to the World” but a kind of “woe to the world.” Not so much of the ways in which heaven and nature sing, but rather, the ways that heaven and nature groan for things to be set right. And We wait. We wait in the mixed-up in-between of the NOW and the NOT YET.

Well … people like therapists, say that developing a capacity for ambivalence — or “mixed feelings” — is one of the hallmarks of maturity. It’s part of being whole. But that doesn’t mean we have to like it. Advent, with all of its NOW and its NOT-YET; it has a way of stretching us. Waiting
that makes us grow in ways that we wouldn’t otherwise choose for ourselves.

CS Lewis talks about “hallways.” Hallways are places with doors to someplace else. Hallways are places to wait, but they’re hard places to live your life. (And this reminds me of Advent.) He writes that, while we’re in the hallways of our lives, it’s important not to (resignedly) camp there, but to truly wait. And in that waiting, to keep praying for glimpses of light. And also to learn obedience to the rules and the ways of the whole house.

He says that while he doesn’t understand why we should have to wait — or why some should wait longer than others — he believes that there must be good in the waiting. Perhaps it’s part of how God shapes us.

Hear these words and more as Melissa goes on to talk about the waiting of John the Baptis in the audio below.

download here