Sometimes it seems we're spending our lives waiting for the Lord to come into our lives and change things. We keep praying, asking Him to change our job, change our parents or our spouse, heal this person, keep that person from dying, take away all the temptations that surround us. But this prayer reminds us - "If he seems to delay, keep watch for him. The Lord WILL come!" In fact, God only SEEMS to delay! He is ALWAYS coming into our lives! But, we have to keep watch, stay vigilant, because it's so easy to miss His appearance! How many people, for example, missed Jesus' coming when he came as a tiny, helpless baby?
It's only through God's compassionate grace that we can recognize God's appearance in our lives. Every day we are surrounded on all sides by signs of God's Presence, but it's only through God's grace that we can keep watch for those signs and truly understand that the Lord is intimately near to us.
Often we don't recognize the Lord's appearance in our lives because we need an attitude adjustment. WE EXPECT GOD TO CHANGE WHAT WE THINK HE SHOULD CHANGE, BUT TO THINK THAT WAY IS TO MAKE OURSELVES GOD. God is Mystery, God is Alpha and Omega, God's thoughts and ways are not our thoughts and ways.
How often do we ask God to CHANGE US? To remove the things that keep us from opening our hearts to welcome His Son? How often do we ask God to take the blinders off our eyes, the ear plugs out of our ears, the nose plugs out of our noses, the muffler off our mouths, so we can sense the Lord in all areas of our lives, and be filled with joy? How often do we ask God to level the mountains of our pride and bitterness, and fill up the deep, dark valleys of our loneliness and despair?
Be still, be very still, and "catch wind" of the Lord in your life, in your heart, warm, precious, as a steady candle flame of joy. We can rejoice because we trust in the Lord! Even when God doesn't look at our lives the way we do, or change our lives the way we think He should, He still is coming into our lives, always coming, always at work to fulfill His plans for us, the plans of His Divine Heart. And in the rosy prism of that joy, that joy of suddenly recognizing that God is indeed near to us, our lives smell, taste, and appear different because we suddenly realize God is walking every path with us and bringing all things to the good for us.
God is both above and beyond all things and in all things, and so we can discover His Presence anywhere and everywhere in all His creation. God comforts us in a hot mug of peppermint cocoa, even as He enlivens us with a cold snowflake melting on our nose. God warms our arms with the wiggly toddler we tuck into bed while we're happily singing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." God soothes us with the cat who jumps into our lap and with the calming scent of lavender skin cream.
God enlightens our inner vision so that we can be grateful for twenty-five dollars to spend on a Christmas present when we had cried because it wasn't fifty dollars. God softens our hearts to appreciate our boring job - because we have a job. God knows our hearts are breaking because of the loved one who died who won't be spending Christmas with us - and suddenly the fresh, clean, smell of a living Christmas tree reminds us that our loved one's life has been transplanted fresh and new into Paradise.
God only SEEMS to delay. Keep watch - because God is always coming into your life, humbly tucked into every experience as surely as He came once tucked into swaddling clothes. Be still, be very still, and you'll find him in the enlightenment of your heart, luminous hope and joy to lighten your darkness, steady as the light of an Advent candle.
Because God is Love. Wherever there is Love, there is God. Love has chosen the paths of the stars and orbits of the planets over our heads, and the ebb and flow of the tides; Love has chosen the directions of a compass. Love accompanies the ebbs and flows of our hearts, the orbits of our successes and failures, and the directions of our lives. All our wandering paths come from Love and lead to Love. Love lies in every direction, and so Love will always bring us safely home to the arms of God.
"The Lord will come; he is true to his word. If he seems to delay, keep watch for him, for he will surely come, alleluia."