Pastor Chris
Not too long ago, my wife and I were invited to attend a fundraiser that had a live auction component. This was the first time I had been at a live auction outside of the small town environment I grew up in in Illinois, and I noticed a couple of things were different in this auction versus the auctions of my youth. In my youth, hanging around the cattle auctions in rural Illinois, the auctioneer was a fast talker whose goal was to get products moved as quickly as possible. The supply of items (usually feeder calves) to be sold was extensive enough that keeping sales churning was more important than maximizing value. What I saw in the auction at the fundraiser here in Phoenix, however, was different.
First, there were no bids for feeder cattle happening here. These were bids on experiences and opportunities that were considered uncommon, to say the least. Instead of a few hundred products to move, there were less than 10, and the difference in approach was considerable. The auctioneer took her time. She engaged each new bidder with gratitude and hope for their continued bidding success. When bidding on an item slowed, instead of a quick count to three and declaring an item sold, she would wait. She would linger on each number, checking with the previous high bidders to see if they’d like to try to push a little further to get the item up for grabs. More often than not, one of the previous bidders would relent and bid “just one more time” to have an opportunity to come out on top. It made me realize that often when we’re forced to wait and we feel we should be doing something, we decide to try and do something – anything to respond to the source of our anxiety – even purchasing something unnecessary because an auctioneer made us think we’d regret it if we didn’t respond right then.
I wonder how often in our daily lives – in ways both great and small – we find ourselves falling into that trap. I don’t necessarily mean falling victim to a smooth-talking auctioneer, but I think we often feel like we need to be doing something. Something isn’t sitting quite right with us, and our first response is to fix it! Not that fixing things is bad, mind you, but there are times where our first instinct to fix causes us to overstep or make a mistake. I don’t know about you, but I’m regularly stuck in traffic somewhere in Phoenix. And there’s a temptation when stuck in traffic to swap lanes to the lane that’s moving faster at that moment. But often, the moment we’ve switched lanes, the lane we’ve entered then comes to a stop, and the lane we’ve left starts moving. Sometimes you can’t win.
The same ideas hold true regarding the waiting that comes with problems with no easy solutions. Even when the solutions we can come up with won’t really fix the difficult problems at hand, we’re tempted to try them anyway, just to feel like we’re doing something.
Next week, we’ll be entering into the season of Advent, where we are invited to wait patiently for the coming of the Lord. As I’ve already said, waiting can be hard. We want to rush ahead to the anticipated Christmas joy. We want to prepare the way for the Lord so that the Lord can come right now to be among us. We want Christmas carols and eggnog and fruitcake (well, maybe not fruitcake). But we’re told that we need to wait. We need to prepare. Because rushing to Christmas means we miss out on the holiness of this moment. We miss out on what it means to anticipate with joy the long-expected Jesus. And when we do wait, often Christ will be revealed in the most unlikely people and places.
So I invite you, don’t rush to Christmas. Live in the season of waiting. Join us for midweek worship services on Dec. 4 and 11 at 7 p.m., and if you have felt the season of waiting especially harshly in recent times, come join us for our Blue Christmas service on the 18th. May our season of waiting prepare us for the unimaginable joy of meeting again this year the Christ child, who will bring new light and life into our world.
Pastor Chris