Down Home: Waiting to meet a baby this Christmas

Waiting can be the hardest part of Christmas.

Don’t believe it? Talk to a child, practically any child. “Can’t wait” rings from little mouths this time of year.

The anticipation builds with each progression toward Christmas morning: When decorations go up in the stores. When Santa rides in at the end of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. When a tree, festooned with ornaments, stands in the den or living room. When lights trim rooftops and yards throughout the neighborhood. When gifts start appearing under the tree. When the family piles in the same pew for Christmas Eve worship. When little ears hear one of their paradoxically happiest sentences of the year: “It’s time to go to bed, or else Santa won’t be able to visit our house.”

Yep, waiting on Christmas is hard.

Advent is all about waiting

That’s what makes Advent so meaningful. It’s all about waiting. About anticipating an arrival, not of Santa, but of Jesus. When we ritualize the wait—by reading meditations, singing carols, lighting candles or whatever you do to mark the passage of days leading up to Christmas—we transform our waiting and even our impatience into something sacred.

Waiting for Christmas works metaphorically on multiple levels.

First, our imaginations journey back more than 2,000 years. We remember and try to empathize with the longing of the Jewish people. Their prophets had remained silent 400 years. They suffered under Roman domination. The common people languished under religious oppression. They longed for the Messiah.

Second, their story is our story, isn’t it? Two millennia later, we still long for the Messiah. We know Jesus’ story: Virginal conception. Joyous birth. Miracles and teaching. Sacrificial crucifixion. Victorious resurrection. Great Commission. Glorious ascension. Promised return. And yet, even with that knowledge, we long to feel Jesus’ presence in our lives. Waiting for Christmas provides an opportunity to comprehend again how we need the Savior and to renew our relationship with him.

A season of reflection

Practically, of course, we wait for all that arrives with Christmas. Like children, perhaps, we wait for gift-giving. But even more, for a season of reflection, for family under one roof, for fellowship across a feast-table.

And finally, we wait in ultimate anticipation. Ironically but not coincidentally, we celebrate Christmas at the end of the year, when media of every sort remind us what happened during the past 12 months. The aggregation of loss and hardship and sorrow reminds us this present reality is not final. And so we long for Jesus to “make all things new.”

This year, our family’s collective imagination received a practical prompt. As Christmas approached, we anticipated the birth of another baby—the first child to be born to our younger daughter, Molly, and to her husband, David.

We counted the weeks. We watched the evidence of that baby’s growth in the resilient body of her mother. We oohed and aahed over tiny clothes and infant accouterments. We felt the kicks. We remembered stories of the baby’s mama’s and daddy’s infancy. We prayed, of course. And we waited, because you can’t do anything but wait.

Eleanor was worth the wait

But despite some possibility to the contrary, we weren’t required to wait all the way until Christmas. Eleanor entered this world about a week and a day early and three weeks before Christmas, adorned with a crown of brown hair and glittering eyes.

Of course, she’s precious. And while she didn’t arrive to take away the sins of the world, she’s already captured our hearts.

I won’t bore you with grandpa stories. Not now, anyway. Consider it my Christmas present to you.

But be assured of this: Eleanor was worth the wait. Praise be to God, from whom this blessing flowed.