The people walking in darkness

"I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth." East Coker (TS Eliot)

Advent, I was reminded this morning, is a time of waiting, of anticipation. A time for reflection. It leads up to Christmas, which is a time of joy, of fulfilment and surprise. The outcome of the waiting transcends expectation. God's gift, whilst long anticipated, is nevertheless unexpected. God's solution to the worlds problem begins not as grandiose intervention into human history, but in the cries of a child in stable in a backwater town.

I'm not very good at waiting. I get distracted and wander off on to other things. But a distracted waiting is not really waiting. All too often it degenerates into attempts to find my own solution. To construct my own gift. To frame my desires, my hopes, my agenda. Yet as Eliot implies true waiting has no agenda. It's not that it is without hope - but rather that hope arises out of the prospect of the surprise rather than in the definition of what it will be. My hope is in the character of God, not the expectation of what he will do. Or at least it should be.