BY THEA JARVIS

ADVENT WAITING

The story is told of a man on a train who was headed for home. The journey was long and wearisome, the train ride hot and dusty.

As the man got closer and closer to his destination, he grew impatient. Night fell and he drifted into sleep, aching for familiar surroundings. He dreamed of his loved ones, the warmth of a holiday hearth. Around midnight, he was awakened by the slowing of the train. Bumping and creaking, the metal giant lurched and shuddered to a standstill. The man pressed his face into a nearby window and peered into the gloom. Darkness.

Five minutes became 10 and then 20 as the traveler waited for a sign of movement. Twisting aimlessly in his seat, he wondered if the train would ever start again. Just as he was falling back to sleep, he heard a distant rumbling. He sensed a rattling, a clattering on the rails as the sound came nearer. Then a rush, a red glare and the fiery eye of a monster engine with its trail of coaches passed next to him before being swallowed up in the night.

In his mind, the man saw the awful end that would have come had his train gone forward. He realized the wisdom and forethought that had kept it on a waiting track, safe from collision with the hard-charging express train that had rocketed past him. The only choice had been to wait. Waiting kept the man out of harm's way. Waiting brought him home.

Like the man on the train, I am eager for things to happen, for time to pass. I can hardly wait for the bread to rise, the gift to arrive, for the Braves to win another World Series. Waiting invites questions about the future, anxiety that situations might never change. Like standing in line while the grocery clerk checks the price of my grapefruit, waiting underscores my powerlessness over what happens next.

But it is this powerlessness that gives God room to act. When I turn the ignition keys over to him, God takes me where I'm supposed to go. When I let him engineer the train, I get home in one piece.

Nowhere is the paradox of waiting more poignant than in the pre-Christmas tableau: a young girl expecting her firstborn, an anxious father-to-be worried about the welfare of his new family, fearful shepherds, watchful beasts, kings following a ripening star. All waited and were given what they needed in God's good time.

"Be patient," the evangelist John urges in the Advent reading. Like a farmer awaiting the soil's precious yield, "Steady your hearts, because the coming of the Lord is at hand."

Waiting on the Lord, opening my heart to his will and believing that only good is planned for me and those I love isn't always easy. But it's a virtue that moves me beyond Advent into Christmas and all the new years to come.