Our language reflects dominant issues in culture. I don’t know when it began but we hear a new word a lot these days: woke. I have to keep looking up the meaning: an adjective derived from African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) meaning “alert to racial prejudice and discrimination”
Have you received the news? reDictionary.com’s Word of the Year is woman, and the definition of woman is an adult female person. I have difficulty with much that is associated with the sex/gender change discussion, yet I do understand how the use of the word man can be experienced as sexist. In fairness to Dictionary.com, they said, “Our selection of woman as our 2022 Word of the Year reflects how the intersection of gender, identity, and language dominates the current cultural conversation and shapes much of our work as a dictionary.” They added that “during the height of the lookups for woman on Dictionary.com in 2022, searches for the word increased more than 1,400%.
I’m confident there will not be that interest in My Word of the Week, Waiting.
All children would agree. They have been waiting long enough!
Think about waiting in a different way. If we step back into the BC times and identify with Israel, they waited thousands of years for the Messiah to come. Our Christian life, like Israel’s, is one long season of waiting for Christ to arrive at any moment. One sentence describes the dynamic of the Christian faith: Christ has come, Christ comes daily in our daily walk with Him, and Christ will come again.
Our Christian life, like Israel’s, is one long season of waiting for Christ to arrive at any moment. One sentence describes the dynamic of the Christian faith: Christ has come, Christ comes daily in our daily walk with Him, and Christ will come again. This coming Christmas day, let’s celebrate that most important event in history: God came to earth as a person. We call it incarnation. Jesus was man; a man who, because he was the God man, was crucified.
Though he left us “in the flesh,” he ascended and sent his Spirit. That means He is always here, in love saying, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.” Now as we wait, we remember and decide that we are going to respond in that he is already here: “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.”
This week, we wait. In the meantime, we are called to step back, pause, and meet Christ in our daily walk with Him.
Waiting will continue to be our stance, because Jesus promised to come again and gather his people to answer our prayer, to establish his “kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.” Let’s make the commitment and live as Christians, waiting as God makes us the people who can receive Him when He comes.
All children would agree. They have been waiting long enough! But think about waiting in a different way. If we step back into the BC times and identify with Israel, we see they waited thousands of years for the Messiah to come. for thousands of years. God’s promise to Abraham was “I’m going to bless you with offspring, and I’m going to bless all the nations through you.” The promise was glorious, but think of the burdensome waiting, the years of slavery in Egypt, the wars of Joshua and David, the exile, and the four hundred years of silence. Waiting, but the promise remained…a king is coming soon
Our Christian life, like Israel’s, is one long season of waiting for Christ to arrive at any moment. In the meantime, we are called to step back, pause, and meet Christ in our daily walk with Him. This is a supreme discipline, and it is counter-cultural. But, as Americans, we don’t wait; we need it now. Amazon two-day delivery. One-hour dry cleaning. Insta-cart deliveries.
But as Blaise Paschal said, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” So, Christians, waiting for God makes us the people who can receive Him when He comes. He is already here: “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.”