Stir us up, O God, with your power and help us to discern the right time, to wait for it but also to act when it comes. Amen.

Dear friends, envision the following everyday scenarios with me:

You've got a half-gallon of milk and a package of Oreo cookies and are ready to check out at the super market. There are ten cashier lanes, only two of which are "open." You get in one of the two long lines behind about ten other shoppers and you wait . . .

Or this: You're driving across the 520 bridge heading into Seattle - Jane, does this sound familiar to you? - and the traffic progresses from sluggish to stop-and-go to total standstill and you wait . . .

Or this: You're on the phone and get the recorded message 'Your call is important to us' and you wait while some inane music is pumped into your ear which seeks to soothe you but only irritates you even more and you wait . . .

Just three everyday scenarios of which there are, of course, many, many more. We don't like to wait, do we? And we don't like to have to wait even more. It's not just a matter of being impatient, although it is that as well. It's a matter of feeling that we're not being treated with the regard rightly due to us. Why don't they open more cashier lanes? Why don't more people take the bus? Why don't these companies hire more people to answer the phone? We don't like to wait, to have to wait. Last year I "waited" for 30 hours at JFK airport for a connecting flight and I can well understand the cries for a "Passenger Bill of Rights" the airlines are now resisting. After getting over my frustration I decided to fill the "empty" time with something useful and started to read, glad that I took the thick, then newly published Albert Einstein biography with me which I was able to finish. Isn't that the crux of the matter that we see waiting as "empty time," as wasted time? Concomitant with that we feel (rightly) that our time is valuable and we resent being forced to "waste" it.

Advent, dear friends, is a season of waiting. It's the very nature of these four weeks before Christmas. It's why we don't celebrate Christmas before Christmas. Advent values waiting, proclaims waiting as important, encourages us to practice the main virtue inherent in all waiting, which is patience. "Be patient," James writes in his letter, "strengthen your hearts" as you wait for the thing that is precious, for the coming of God into your life. Patiently waiting is something good. It's not simply passively enduring "empty" time. It's the challenge of filling that time with some other activity. It's so simple and true that we often oversee it. Someone once said: "The secret of patience is doing something else in the meantime." Why doesn't it ever occur to us that we can say some (silent) prayers in the line at the grocery store? That we can listen to an audio-book in traffic? That we can read a (good, long) book at the airport? If we are confronted with "empty" time, how about considering it the time when God has some special message for us if we would just tune in? Myriad are the ways we can let "empty" time be filled. Myriad the ways we can turn waiting and boredom into a highly creative activity. Yes: waiting can be good, beneficial, indeed salutary. Advent calls us to wait for God's "right time," God's kairos (which is one of the Greek words for time) God's right time, the tipping point as it were for our awareness of God's presence in new and wonderful ways. We can't manipulate God's right time. We have to wait for it.

On the other hand - and there's always an "other hand," isn't there? - Advent proclaims that not all waiting is good. We hear of this bad kind of waiting in the question of John the Baptist: Are you the one or should we wait for another? It was the right time for the messiah to come and John was beginning to doubt that. John was contemplating continuing to wait. He was tempted to miss the unique "right time" of God. That was a real possibility. Who could blame him for that doubt and wavering? He was in prison, not a place where one expects the fulfillment of divine promises. His waiting for the messiah was surely becoming a kind of "waiting for Godot." The feeling that this "ain't gonna happen" must have taken hold of his faint heart. Insisting on waiting when it's time to act is never good. There are "right times" for things to happen and we can miss them, bypass them so to speak by misusing the virtue of patience to cloak our own timidity and lack of resolve to act. Via Media is our Anglican watchword and we're rightly proud of our ethos of balance and seeking to bridge opposites. Sitting on the fence, however, is not a seat we can maintain for long.

Advent, dear friends, is a time for us to ask ourselves when waiting is good and patience called for. Advent is also a time to ask ourselves when it's time to act, to get involved, to make important decisions. Advent helps us perceive a new kairos, a new right time, when impatience is the virtue and we let God do new things in our lives. Amen.

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