Are We Waiting on God, or is God Waiting on Us?

I don’t have many memories from childhood. It’s odd. I can recall a few snapshots in time, maybe a handful of fifteen-second clips, but for the most part, my memories didn’t come online until the fourth grade. There are reasons for this, of course, but that’s a conversation for another day. The memories I do have all seem to share a common thread: I was angry. Specifically, I was angry at God.

To be fair, it wasn’t really God’s fault. We hadn’t been properly introduced.

I remember sitting on the edge of my twin-sized bed. The table lamp cast a thick yellow glow on the faux wood paneling that was all the rage in the early ‘80s. My mother came in to check on me. I grew up in a house where violent outbursts were the norm. Rarely were they directed at me, but bearing witness to the tirades took its toll over time.

When my mom walked in, I felt a tinge of hope. From what I’ve pieced together with some wonderful counselors, warmth and nurture weren’t exactly her strong suit. But that day, she was present. She sat on the edge of my bed, shoulder to shoulder with me, and asked if I was okay. I didn’t say a word. I wasn’t sure what I could say or what was acceptable. How quickly we learn, as kids, to hide our pain.

In her hand, she held a little pocket-sized New Testament. She thumbed through it and said, “You can always talk to God about it. That’s what I do, and it helps.” Then she left.

For context, we didn’t go to church. I had no idea who or what “God” was. Yet, strangely, what she said made sense to me. There was something—or someone—bigger than us, and you could tell it all the bad stuff, and somehow, it would help. At the very least, it gave me someone to blame.

So, I started listing my grievances to this God, waiting for it to do something. That practice lasted the better part of thirty years.

Advent and the Art of Waiting

I suppose that’s what Advent is about—waiting, hoping, anticipating. In the words of Adam Duritz from Counting Crows, “…there’s reason to believe that maybe this year could be better than the last.” Advent is the season of waiting—a holy anticipation of something beautiful breaking into our lives. It’s a time to sit in the tension between longing and fulfillment, hope and reality. Like holding your breath just before a sunrise, Advent gently reminds us that light is coming, even when the world feels unbearably dark.

Advent invites stillness, not rushing. It whispers that God shows up in the quiet, the waiting, and the mundane. It’s the story of hope wrapped in swaddling clothes, joy found in unexpected places, and love arriving not with a shout, but with a whisper.

In Advent, we prepare our hearts—not by striving, but by making space for wonder. It’s a season that says, “You don’t have to have it all together; just be ready to receive.”

The Waiting Feels Endless

But what exactly can we expect to receive? My father’s temper leveled out as he got older and drank less, but our family never morphed into the kind of family I saw on ‘80s primetime TV. I talked to God as a kid, some as a teen, but by college, we were no longer on speaking terms. The violence in my house may have subsided, but I couldn’t ignore the violence simmering beneath the surface of our “civilized” nation. One problem would fade, only for three more to take its place.

This God I had been taught to blame or trust seemed uninterested or incapable of curbing the chaos.

Or so I thought.

Something Did Change

That’s the beauty of Advent: it asks us to wait. And if we’re honest, waiting is something we’ve forgotten how to do. If we’re brutally honest, most of us despise waiting—because stillness terrifies us. When the calendar clears, when the notifications stop, when the kids stop slipping tiny hands under the bathroom door (I see you, moms), we’re left with time and space to reflect.

And that’s when the truth creeps in—not the sanitized, Pinterest-worthy truths, but the raw kind that emerges when reality collides with unmet expectations.

Stillness reveals something deeply human: we are not okay.

We’ve all been hurt, and we’ve all hurt others. Like wounded animals, we lash out at anything we perceive as a threat. We hide behind our curated lives, chasing the next thing we think will finally make us whole—the job, the house, the relationship, the accolade.

You know the life I’m talking about, right? The one that lies just beyond your reach.

The one you don’t have.

The one you think you want… until you get it and realize it’s still not enough.

This is the life we live on repeat. Just waiting for God to do something to fix it.

But the fix requires our participation.

The Sweetest "Yes"

For 2,000 years, we’ve been waiting for God to put the world back together. But 2000 years ago something did change. This God, unlike the gods of its time, exchanged control for consent. The sweetest “yes” ever uttered came from an unwed peasant girl who agreed to birth something new into the world.

This child grew into a man who turned religion on its head, including those cast aside by the system—no strings attached. He modeled a new way to be human, one rooted in hope, love, joy, and peace. A peace so radical it chose death over harming another because love simply cannot stay dead.

Through Mary’s “Let it be,” the Way was born to heal us from our harm. Hurt people hurt people, but healed people heal people. Love is the only thing that has ever changed the world, and it starts by teaching us to see the world—and ourselves—clearly enough to love it, even the ugly parts.

It’s in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus that we are given the most beautiful of invitations—come and heal.

Advent’s Call to Heal

Healing isn’t linear, and it takes as long as it takes. But like Mary, it requires our consent. We have to say yes to carrying the weight of our past, to sitting in the discomfort of waiting, and to trusting that even when the story doesn’t end the way we hoped, it can still be good. I’ve come to understand that I wasn’t angry at God—I was grieving. Even children know when things aren’t as they were meant to be. Anger was easy because it required nothing of me. Healing was hard because I had to do the deep work of self-reflection and forgiveness.

This Advent, I’m no longer waiting on God to do what God needs to do. Perfect love did all that was required and more. And it will do it again.

We see glimpses of this love in people like Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, and Gandhi—imperfect humans who chose the narrow road of radical love and nonviolence.

I can’t help but wonder: is it God who’s waiting on us? Waiting for us to be brave enough to face our collective pain, to heal, and to embody the love that transforms empires into Kingdoms—not through force, but through the only weapon that has ever worked.

Love.

✌🏼❤️
Jon