Thursday, November 29, 2012

Advent Thoughts: Cat Time

Baxter has an internal clock that is set by his stomach.  He knows when it is time to eat.  At 5:00 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. he is ready to chomp on the food the second it appears.  If it is just a few minutes late, I hear about it persistently.  Like an alarm that won’t shut off until the button is pushed, Baxter cries for his food no matter what else might be happening until it is served for his satisfaction.  There is no patient waiting on his part, only impatient nagging.

Children can get that way about Christmas.  Their internal clocks are set by the merchandizing industry to begin wanting the “must have’s” for this year in early October.  TV, internet and peers stoke this desire with their enticing demonstrations of what the latest fad can do or how it can add to one’s image.  These promise the “best ever” Christmas, and they wow us with the innovations of technology and fashion.  Our children get excited and fidgety for the “big day”.  We get anxious about finding the right present and paying for it.  No one is at ease with the season.

God tells time differently, and Advent is based upon God’s time.  It is a season of patient waiting for something that is not clearly seen or completely understood.  Unlike Baxter before a meal or our children before Christmas, Advent seeks to shape our desires to be more open, more receptive and accepting of God, however the divine mystery comes into our lives.  Advent seeks to whet our appetite for the holy become incarnate in our midst in whatever form the Word made Flesh might show us now.  Those who held a preconceived idea of who the Messiah was and how He would come missed the true Savior born in simple surroundings of ordinary parents in a small town.  Advent is meant to prepare us to receive the unexpected ways of God that fulfill the promise of salvation from sin and death.

To do this, God waits.  He waits for life to throw us a few curves with disappointments and losses.  He waits for us to become more humble about what we can do and more open to His grace.  He waits to teach us that waiting isn’t time wasted, but time ripening until it’s ready to receive what God has to offer in His Son born among us.  All this waiting changes what we desire from living, so that we can learn what true hope is—not biding our time until we get what we want, but trusting in God’s love for us until we accept what He gives us as the source of true happiness.

Cats and children are often impatient.  We are sometimes catty and childish.  Still, God waits for each of us to grow up in the faith, and provides another Advent to do just that.