What Christmas and the Chicago Cubs Teach us About Waiting.

We all know how impatient our world is. Just drive down a busy street during rush hour to discover an angry, self-absorbed, and impatient person. And before you agree with me too quickly, let me point out that I'm talking about you. I'm also talking about myself. We are an impatient people; we cringe at the idea of having to wait for something good.

Another example would be technology. How many times a day do you become frustrated at your mobile device that just won't load quickly enough? Do you realize that the signal has to go to space and back before you can read that Facebook post? Or how about when we try to order food through a phone app that doesn't seem to be working correctly? Now we've got to stand in line and wait an extra five minutes to get our food instead of being able to just grab it and go.

As I write this post, Christmas is a week away and I'm thinking back to when I was a kid; December was undoubtedly the longest month of the year. Waiting to open presents was pure torture. Some children count down the days, but that never helped me at all; it only made the days drag on more slowly. Then, as soon as Christmas is over, the wait begins for next year.

Waiting an entire year for presents can be difficult for sure; but I can assure you that it has nothing on waiting for the promised Messiah. The people of Israel had a period of 400 years in-between the events of the Old Testament and the birth of Jesus. God was seemingly silent during this period and they simply had to wait. When Jesus was finally born, many of them still didn't believe because He wasn't what they were expecting.

The Chicago Cubs waited for 107 years for a World Series Championship and in 2016, the wait was finally over. Entire generations of baseball fans never saw the Cubs win a championship. Yet, they showed up to the games, cheered their team on and hoped for the day that their team would hoist that coveted trophy. When it finally happened, you would have been hard pressed to find a Cubs fan that would express disappointment. Every single Cubs fan - scratch that - every single baseball fan saw the significance of that moment.

However, when Jesus came, though the wait was finally over, the people of Israel missed it. Many of them even today; 2,000 years after the coming of the Messiah, are still waiting. It seems that in their waiting, they created their own ending to the story. So much so that when God showed up, they didn't recognize Him because He didn't fit their image of the fulfilled promise.

Seems crazy to us but we do the exact same thing don't we? We wait for the job offer, healing, a better marriage, vacation time, answered prayers, etc. and when God finally shows up, we tend to miss it because He didn't show up in our timing or by our methods.

Galatians 4:4 says, "But when the fulness of time had come, God sent forth His Son..."

And in the same way, God will show up in the fulness of time in your circumstance. Often, He will show up in unexpected ways, places and times; but He will show up. The question is, will you recognize Him when He does?

We always say that God was silent for 400 years before Jesus came, and that is true to the effect that God stopped speaking through the prophets. However, the people of Israel had thousands of years worth of history, prophecies and Scriptures to look back on and hear the voice of God. They silenced God in their lives and then proceeded to put the blame on Him.

In those moments of waiting when God seems silent, it's not because He isn't speaking, it's because we aren't listening. When God asks us to wait on Him, He isn't saying that we should stop listening. Dive into His Word, remember His promises, pray fervently, be in community with brothers and sisters in Christ, pour out your heart to God, remember what He has done for you in the past.

That way, when the fulness of time comes, and God shows up, you will have spent so much time with Him that you can't help but recognize Him. If in the waiting, you do nothing, then when God does something, you'll miss it. But if in the waiting, you seek Him, you won't miss a moment of the action.

Christmas teaches us that waiting actually gives us uninterrupted time to seek the face of God so that we don't miss Him when He shows up.