8But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. 9The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance…. 13But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home. (2 Peter 3: 8-9, 13)
God will come when God will come. We’ve heard that over and over. But, granted, this life of faith is at times frustrating and often just downright difficult. How do you keep holding on to a hope when you often see no progress at all? How can we continue to be forced to wait for whatever it is for which we’re waiting? Because, as the passage says, we are promised a new heaven and a new earth. We are promised that all of Creation will be recreated. We are promised that, once and for all, righteousness will have a home. Righteousness, then, will be the norm. Righteousness will be an everyday thing. Righteousness will be that place where at the end of all our wandering, at the end of all our frustrations, at the end of the difficult days and the hours when you feel like you can do no more, we will enter our sacred place and be invited to pull the covers of righteousness over our heads and feel like things are the way they should be. So in this Season of Advent, we learn to wait. Good things cannot be rushed. The plan for God’s Kingdom was not made hastily and it cannot be just thrown together because we are getting a bit impatient with the whole ordeal. So, what do we do in the meantime? We live as if it’s here. We live righteousness. We give it a home. The Holy and the Sacred is not unattainable. In fact, if we just open our eyes, it is spilling into our lives even as we speak. God does not sit back and watch us squirm and strain until all is said and done. Rather, God gives us glimpse after glimpse and incarnation after incarnation and waits with infinite patience for us to respond. Look around…there are more burning bushes and parted seas and even waiting mangers in holy grottos than we can ever possibly imagine. As the writer of this passage maintains, it is that Holy Patience, that Waiting God in which we find our salvation. And so if we live as if the Holy and the Sacred has completely filled our lives, righteousness will indeed have a home and we will no longer be waiting for salvation.
But the part that we can’t forget, is that after righteousness has found us and soothed us and covered us, the next morning invites us to enter again and bring the home that we’ve found into our lives and into the world. See, the covers were NEVER meant to stay over our heads. Living righteousness is about being whatever it is for which you’ve waited and waking up and living it, whether or not the world seems to notice.
Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass.. it’s about learning to dance in the rain. (Vivian Greene)
Grace and Peace,
Shelli
(Sorry I’ve gotten thrown off the last few days…life happens…back on track, hopefully! :))
Dancing to God 