Patience in the Season of Advent… and Beyond

Photo by Nathan Lemon on Unsplash

The Christmas season too often emphasizes a rush of activity to create the perfect holiday atmosphere. Whether it’s the fight for Black Friday shopping deals, the competition to have the most Christmas lights blazing in the yard, or the frenzied preparation of gourmet meals, we have become accustomed to the anxious pressure to make everything perfect.

But the season of Advent is meant to be a season of patient waiting. Even though we celebrate the birth of Christ on Christmas Day, the church has historically observed Advent as a time of looking forward to the second coming of Christ. We wait for what God is going to do because we remember what God has already done.

Patience as Trust

During the first week of Advent this year, I reflected on this season of waiting, and how my own temperament seems so ill-suited to the task. I am not a patient person. (Drive with me on the back roads of Kentucky and you will discover my lack of patience with slow drivers unfamiliar with our curvy, hilly roads.) I tend to be a grab-the-bull-by-the-horns kind of person. Get up and get it done. Take the initiative. But as I reflected on Advent and why I find it so difficult to be patient, I felt convicted that I am not patient because I do not trust God enough. Depending on the situation, my lack of trust may be founded on different misconceptions. Perhaps I don’t believe God is paying enough attention to my suffering, or perhaps I think my plan for the present is better than God’s, or perhaps I worry that everything will spiral out of control if I don’t take action now. So I attempt to take control myself, rather than trusting that the God who designed all of creation—the God who loved me enough to give his own son for my life—knows how to order the world better than I do and loves it more than I can ever imagine.

John Wesley’s own definition of patience further convicts me in this regard. In his sermon, “On Patience,” Wesley described patience as “a gracious temper, wrought in the heart of a believer, by the power of the Holy Ghost. It is a disposition to suffer whatever pleases God, in the manner and for the time that pleases him.” Those who are patient are those who trust God to bring to pass his perfect will. 

I am not the first to struggle with trusting God to bring about his plans in his own timing. Scripture is full of followers of God who struggled with patience. They provide evidence of various motivations that keep us from fully trusting God.

The Impatience of Fear 

Abraham trusted God to bring his promises to pass, but he nonetheless stumbled many times along the path. He lied about Sarah being his wife (twice!) in order to protect himself against strong kings whom he feared might kill him to gain a wife (Gen. 12:10-20, 20:1-18). Although Abraham already had the promise of God—and his wife had not yet borne a child to fulfill the promise—Abraham let his fear, rather than his trust in a covenant-keeping God, guide his decision-making.

Similarly, during Isaiah’s time, the Assyrian army threatened invasion. Fear of a stronger nation led Judah to make an alliance with Egypt rather than trust in God for the nation’s protection (Isaiah 30). God told his people how to be saved, and yet they did not listen: “For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength” (Isa 30:15).

The Impatience of Confusion

After living ten years in the land of Canaan and still not having children, Abraham and Sarah began to misinterpret the promise they heard from God. Sarah told her husband that “the Lord has prevented me from bearing children” and urged him to have sex with her servant Hagar instead so that they could have children (Gen. 16:1-6). The family dysfunction that followed the birth of Ishmael resulted from their lack of patience in God’s plan.

Given their old age, we might be tempted to excuse their impatience. They had waited a long time for the fulfillment of the promise, and God had not indicated they would have to wait so long to see the promise fulfilled. But they took delayed fulfillment as license for creative reinterpretation, much to their detriment. Just because we cannot yet see the fulfillment of God’s promises does not mean that God isn’t already working on it.

The Impatience of Good Intentions 

Sometimes good intentions nonetheless result in terrible decisions. King Saul had desired to honor God prior to going to war with the Philistines by offering sacrifices to God. Although he had been told to wait for Samuel to arrive so that Samuel could make the sacrifices and offer further instructions, Saul began to fear when Samuel was delayed and the people mustered for battle began to slip away. Saul offered the sacrifices himself, and when Samuel arrived, he rebuked the king for not keeping the commandment of the Lord (1 Sam. 13:5-15). As a result, Samuel prophesied that the kingdom would be taken away from Saul. The king’s good intentions led to rash actions that dishonored the very God he had intended to honor.

Recovering Patience

The common denominator in these stories lies in their focus on an uncertain future. But the season of Advent encourages patient trust in the Lord for the future by reminding us of what God has already accomplished through Christ in the past. The birth of Jesus demonstrates the fulfillment of God’s promises of long ago: promises to Abraham that all the nations of the earth would be blessed through him (Gen. 12:3), promises to David that he would have a descendant on the throne forever (2 Sam. 7:16), and promises to the people of God that they would receive a new heart and a new Spirit (Ezek. 36:26). God’s past faithfulness shows us that we can continue to trust in him as we await the return of Christ.

We must keep in mind, however, that how God will accomplish his purposes may not line up with our expectations. When Jesus arrived the first time, the people did not expect a babe in a manger or a death on a Roman cross. The deep trust in God that patience requires means that we must relinquish any preconceived notions of how God’s work must be done. This is part of the point of the Lord’s prayer. When we pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” we are proclaiming that we will submit to God’s plans and purposes, no matter how strange or surprising they may turn out to be. We announce our willingness to endure whatever suffering or blessing the Lord chooses for us, trusting that his plans will ultimately prevail. N. T. Wright describes well this aspect of patience:

Patience is one of the places where faith, hope, and love meet up. Those who believe in God the creator and in the eventual triumph of his good purposes for the world will not be in a hurry to grasp at quick-fix solutions in their own life or in their vocation and mission—though they will not be slow to take God-given opportunities when those arise. In particular, they will not be in a hurry to force ideas and solutions on other people. Not for nothing is patience the first thing that Paul says about love (1 Corinthians 13.4) (After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters, 2010, 249).

This deep repose in the trustworthy character of God allows believers to stand firm in the evil day, trusting in the strength of the Lord’s great power (Eph. 6:10).

The apostle Paul gives us an excellent example of how to live this out. If anyone had reason to grumble in impatience, it was this missionary who had been wrongfully imprisoned for years for preaching the Gospel. The injustice of his incarceration, however, did not make him lose hope. Rather, in the midst of his suffering Paul was able to exhort believers to rejoice in all circumstances: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:6-7). Paul was not ignoring his chains, but rather he looked ahead to the eternal glory that lay before him. He trusted that the God who had saved him had not abandoned him. The best was yet to come.

Looking Forward with Patience

Perhaps one of the more difficult challenges of celebrating the Advent season in our current culture is looking far enough forward. We are so eager to celebrate the birth of Christ that we neglect the call to await Christ’s return with longing. Two thousand years after his first coming, we often fail to celebrate the promise of the second. When the Lord returns and establishes the new creation, there will be no more death or mourning or crying (Rev. 21:4). We should eagerly await his return!

But patience is necessary here, as well. We are told in 2 Peter 3:9 that “The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance.” The delay of the return of the Lord is an act of God’s grace and love, allowing more time for nonbelievers to come to know their Savior before the time of judgment. And so we wait, patiently. We long for the glory of the Lord to be fully manifest, but we trust that the delay is an act of divine love.

Conclusion

As we move through Advent, we need to fight against the cultural pressure to rush through the season. Slow times of contemplation are necessary to counter the impatient frenzy of gifts and baubles and baked goods. The babe in the manger on Christmas morning is not the end of the season of hopeful waiting; the Christ child points to the promise of all the good things yet to come for those who patiently await the return of their trustworthy Lord.

Suzanne Nicholson is Professor of New Testament at Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky. She is an Elder in the Global Methodist Church and serves as Assistant Lead Editor of Firebrand.