Hope
Read Exodus 3:7-22
We have lost our ability to wait well- or perhaps at all. With services like same-day shipping, mobile food ordering, streaming services, and even grocery delivery, we can have anything we need as soon as we want it. As technology develops and our demand for convenience grows, many of us seem to have lost a discipline we see throughout Scripture- the art of waiting. Yesterday, we talked about the hints throughout the Bible about who God's people were waiting for, but what might it have been like and felt like to wait all that time?
Consider Moses and the story of the Exodus. For generations, God's people suffered hardship under the rule of Pharaoh, and apart from the provision and power of God, they were helpless to save themselves. So, the Israelites--sometimes patiently and other times with deep frustration-- waited for their rescuer, until (finally), God sent Moses to deliver them from slavery.
In the same way God's people were made to wait for their deliverance from Egypt, God didn't send Jesus to save His people right away. In fact, he waited thousands of years to send the promised Rescuer, sometimes leaving them wondering if He had forgotten them altogether. But God continued to whisper it over and over again as His children waited, knowing that one day, when no one was expecting it, Jesus--their Rescuer and ours--would come.
Though pictures of faithful waiting and of promise fulfilled throughout the Bible should fill us with great hope, we still struggle to wait well. But advent calls us out of our natural state of impatience and toward unhurried waiting. Like we read in today's Scripture--God promised to raise someone up who would establish His forever, Kingdom. We know that the promises one is Jesus, and we know that He has come and that He will come again. But for now, full of hope and longing, we wait.