Today marks the second Sunday of Advent. A time that used to reflect on the preparations made for the arrival of the Messiah. Of the birth of John the Baptist, he who would prepare a way for the Lord.
A voice of one calling:
"In the wilderness prepare
the way for the Lord;
make straight in the desert
a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be raised up,
every mountain and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level,
the rugged places a plain.
And the glory of the Lord will be revealed,
and all people will see it together.
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken."
Isaiah 40:3-5
Praise be to the Lord God, the God of Israel who alone does marvelous deeds.
Psalm 72:18
In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”
Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”
“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”
The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called[a] the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail.”
“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.
Luke 1:26-38
I've always loved the comparison in the miracles of the birth of John and of Jesus. Though they are not of the same level, through them we see the breadth of the work of God - to bring forth life from the dead and to bring forth life from nothingness. To restore and rejuvenate, as well as to completely create from new. A beautiful reminder that no matter where we may be in our lives, God can prepare a way.
We see that God is always planning ahead. He placed prophecy in place not just for His coming, but for His herald’s coming. He arranges for Elizabeth and Zechariah to be up in years, and to come to Mary before she and Joseph are together. Everything according to his time table and design.
God will make a way.
In addition, I think it is also a picture of how we are to wait. To have an expectancy in our waiting. To continue to be about the work that he has called us to while we wait. That’s our preparation. The call on our lives to prepare ye the way of the Lord.
Zechariah was still serving in the temple. He was still week in and week out, faithfully serving where he was called. This will even play an important part of his story when he is struck mute.
But for our purposes today, the focus is that he is still working. Zechariah, Elizabeth, Joseph, Mary - they have all remained faithful Jewish people up to and through the moment God speaks.
The waiting we are called to, the waiting we find ourselves in is not to be an inactive one. It’s meant to be full of action.
That may seem counter-intuitive, but it’s not. We, as believers, do not get to get ourselves into church, take up a pew, and then simply wait until we are called home, or Jesus returns, whichever comes first. We don’t get to run away from the world and retreat into our cozy little safe spaces and wait ‘til Jesus comes.
We are called out.
“Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning, and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast, so that they may open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes.”
Luke 12:35-37
Think about the days before Jesus’s birth was announced. God had not directly spoken to his people for over 400 years. The prophecies from Isaiah above were over 700 years old. The people had been longing for a Messiah, waiting for the promised someone to come and save them for a long time. They had been waiting just to hear from God again.
But in that waiting, life had to go on. Service had to go on. Faithful dedication to the principles and promises of God had to continue. Passovers continued. The feasts continued. The temple continued.
The laws requiring justice to the oppressed, hospitality to the immigrant, and charity to the poor remained.
And it’s to those whom were continuing in faithful service that God arrives.
Isn’t that the way through Scripture? God spoke to Noah, the patriarch of the remaining faithful family. God works through Daniel and his friends remaining faithful in the midst of captivity. God comes to Elizabeth and Zechariah and to Joseph and Mary, highlighting them as faithful servants.
Those who remain steadfast in their faith not just being held, but lived out.
Therefore, it is imperative that we remain active in our faith, actively seeking to serve others, to love others, to go and to tell.
And in doing so, I think we also need to remember that sometimes faithful service isn’t exciting. It’s not glamorous. And it may not feel important.
Sometimes faithful service might look like doing the same small thing over and over again each and every day. Continuing to do the last thing you were called to, until the Lord directs you elsewhere.
In fact, it may look small.
I believe this reminder is necessary, because I think we can run a danger in not remembering that the scriptures are a highlight reel of the key players not a play-by-play account. We can look at the events of the lives of Jesus or the apostles and could foolishly believe our lives are supposed to be that exciting every day. That something should be happening every second for us to feel our faith. And to believe that if it is not, we must be out of the will of God or missing it somehow.
This type of reading ignores the long passages of waiting time that are omitted from the scriptures. There are decades of Jesus’s life not recorded and even for the three years that are heavily recorded, we don’t get the long stretches of walking that would have occurred. For Paul, we don’t get paragraphs on the months that would have been spent sailing or other forms of travel. The repetitive days he would have spent in prison, or on just making tents.
Our lives might be like that too. Our faithful service might just be watching and teaching toddlers in Sunday School week after week, year after year, until the Lord directs you to something else. It might be faithfully making a meal for others as often as you are able. It might be going to your job with a smile on your face each morning and a good word for everyone you see.
It’s not big, but it’s faithful. And if it is where you are called, it is just where you are supposed to be.
So, on this second Sunday of advent, may we remember that God is always making a way and that we are to be faithfully working while we are waiting on His deliverance, even if that may look repetitive or small.
May we prepare that way today.
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