December 3rdThe Christmas Pickle
To my dear TFMC family,
This year, we introduced Chloe to the “Christmas Pickle.” It’s an old tradition from Germany where the last ornament to be hung is a glass pickle. The ornament, green, is hidden amongst the boughs of the tree. The tradition goes, the first person who finds the pickle on Christmas day, gets to open the first gift. In other traditions, the person who finds the pickle first receives a special gift. After telling Chloe about the pickle, she couldn’t wait for it to be hung, so she could find it. Patience is still something we’re working on teaching Chloe.
Waiting to find the Christmas Pickle feels like an apt image for this week. We’re not waiting to search for a well hidden Christmas ornament, rather, we’re waiting for this exciting promise, which we read last week, to come to fruition. However, we’re waiting, it hasn’t happened yet. And that’s the hard part. We’re waiting. And we’re waiting on God.
Painting with a really broad brush, I’ll confess that we, myself included, aren’t very patient people. When I have a package on the way, I try to track it step by step so that I don’t miss it’s delivery. It will likely be there when I get home but still it offers me some sense of control. I get frustrated at waiting for red lights, or when people are just barely doing the speed limit. As an aside I’m honestly surprised I haven’t been flagged by more speed cameras. When our devices are slow to load, I’m guilty of constantly refreshing thinking that it will make it load faster. (Fun fact, it doesn’t). Our noses get out of joint if Amazon doesn’t deliver the next day, and with the news cycle as fast as it is, our politicians must deliver in a timely fashion, lest the court of public opinion lambaste them for not acting fast enough.
In some respect, our western culture’s sense of efficiency clashes with how God works in the world. Then again, God’s ways aren’t our ways. I was reflecting on this again as I led communion at the Orchard View this week, when I prayed, “We must stay awake and pay attention because your peace is not our peace, and your ways are not our ways.” And I would extend that to say that God’s time is not our time.
God’s time doesn’t work in the way’s that we want it to. God is patient, in a way that humankind is not. And that’s the tough challenge. We’re called to be patient. However, to be patient, doesn't always mean that we’re doing nothing. Holy Waiting is far from it.
Holy Waiting is expectant waiting, it is active waiting. It’s seeking and searching. It’s attuning ourselves to be sensitive and ready to notice that God is in fact at work, as we wait. Part of this waiting is getting ready, like parents who prepare a nursery, and prepare space for an expected child, we’re called to make space for Jesus in our waiting. While we might not like it, this week, we’re called to patience.
Yours,
Craig Janzen Neufeld, Pastor