It’s been a season of waiting in so many ways. Waiting for direction in life decisions, waiting for breakthrough in a hard situation, waiting for a dear friend’s loved one to awaken from a coma after a bike accident. Waiting for plumbers to come fix our leaky pipes and for the entire family to be well at the same time. These are the hard and holy things and the everyday mundane things we face as dwellers in this space of the now and the not yet.

Then again, that’s what Advent is. It’s all about the waiting.

One evening last week I put the lights on the tree while the Chosen Christmas special (2021) played in the background. At one point I had to set the decorating aside and simply listen. I was being drawn into the story of waiting and watching as it would have been experienced on that sacred night 2000 years ago when God stepped into our world in the most unusual way.

O praise His name Emmanuel.

The words of the song by Chris Tomlin …

“What fear we felt in the silent age
Four hundred years can He be found
But broken by a baby’s cry
Rejoice in the hallowed manger ground.”

Four hundred years of silence broken by a baby’s cry? That’s how God chose to break the silence? It’s so unexpected. So humble. What a gentle and unpretentious way to enter in. To say “here I am”.

I’ve been reading through the Bible this year. I’m way behind on my Bible Recap plan but that’s ok. Camping out lately in Isaiah and Jeremiah and some of the other prophets sent by God to warn His people of impending disaster if they didn’t repent of their idolatrous, rebellious ways. God had a lot to say through these messengers. He admonished, comforted, strengthened and directed His beloved Israel through the generations.

And then …. Silence. Four hundred years of it. While the earth awaits the promised Messiah, God is strangely silent.

Then one ordinary night in Bethlehem a star lights up the sky and a baby’s cry pierces the silence and the long-awaited promise is fulfilled. The One with ALL the power chose to arrive in the most powerless form of all … a newborn baby.

Far from the grand entrance most of our political leaders and modern-day celebrities like to make, the King of kings took the humblest form in the most humble, unsanitary conditions with the lowliest welcoming crew imaginable, consisting of a wide-eyed young mom and dad, some smelly shepherds and an assortment of barn animals.

He slipped in quietly, grew up in a humble family in an unassuming village and waited 30 years to make himself known. Even then, he chose an ordinary group of random guys to be His closest confidantes and companions and to carry on his mission, which was conceivably the greatest mission ever given.

It’s all so strangely amazing and a little perplexing but I can just picture the Father and Son smiling as they orchestrated this plan. It’s about going first to the uninvited and the unwanted, the looked-over, the ones considered worthless in that society, those who couldn’t walk or speak or contribute.

I would have been in that group. Living in that place and time as a Gentile woman, that’s two marks against me simply from being born. What would it have been like to have met Jesus face to face? To have looked into His eyes and felt His love pour over me? To have received the gift of instant belonging and worth and acceptance, perhaps to have been seen, truly seen, for the first time ever?

Til He appeared and the soul felt His worth.

Jesus, thank you for choosing to make yourself so accessible. For traveling the backroads and taking the long way, for all the times you went out of your way to chat with and bring hope to the outcast.

He became hope to all mankind, and still is to this day. He came the first time as a Lamb. He’ll come again as a Lion to set all things right. And so we wait. We wait and we worship and we hold to the hope that His voice will once again pierce the darkness and light up our world.

O come o come Emmanuel!

When God Is Silent