Waiting – thoughts from Bonhoeffer (Dec 21)

Today, as we wait eagerly for Christmas which is so close now, I wanted to share some thoughts on waiting from Bonhoeffer, taken from his advent reflections book God is in the Manger:
“Waiting is an art that our impatient age has forgotten. It wants to break open the ripe fruit when it has hardly finished planting the shoot. But all too often the greedy eyes are only deceived; the fruit that seemed so precious is still green on the inside, and disrespected hands ungratefully toss aside what has so disappointed them…..Not everyone can wait: neither the sated nor the satisfied nor those without respect can wait. The only ones who can wait are people who carry restlessness around with them…..A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes – and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent”
As we await Christmas in these final days of advent we know the prison cell of our lives has been opened from the outside – not by what we do but by what Jesus did for us – and we can have home as we wait for His return that when the fruit is ripe He will return. For now we must wait with restlessness as we await His second coming.