Waiting for the Big Brown Truck (1st Wednesday of Advent)

There is a classic series of Calvin and Hobbes comic strips where Calvin is waiting for a beanie hat (complete with attached mini-helicopter blade) to come in the mail. He’d eaten bowl after bowl of cereal to get enough proof-of-purchases to send in, not realizing that it takes several weeks to get a beanie in return. Readers of the strip followed Calvin as he waited day-by-day for the mail to come. At first, he is extremely excited to come home from school and check the mail, but he eventually turns cynical. After several weeks he gives up hope that the beanie will ever come. His sense of expectation dulled, Calvin walks into the kitchen one day after school and asks his mom something to the effect of, "I don’t suppose it came in today, did it?" Of course, the beanie had come in that day, when he had least expected it.

I must confess that I am a lot like Calvin when it comes to waiting for future events. When I was younger, my twin brother Michael, my younger sister Naomi and I would all eagerly await the coming of the "big brown truck" (UPS) during the Christmas season. We knew that every year our grandparents and other relatives would be sending us boxes filled with presents. Like Calvin I went through the giddy-with-anticipation phase all the way to the cynical, "it will never come" phase.

I think that it is human nature for us to want results now. We all struggle with impatience, at least I know that I do! When things take longer than I expected them to, I become discouraged and defeated. For example, I recently found out that the chaplaincy board is meeting on the 13th of December, not later this week as I thought. I’d already missed getting everything into the November board thanks to Navy red tape, so the extra week of waiting is killing me. Every day I lose a little bit of hope that I’ll ever get into the Navy as a chaplain. I’m resigning myself to a dismal future of unmet expectations.

The Apostle Peter recognized that many of the early Christians were falling into the same trap that I’ve fallen into so many times. In his second letter he notes that there are people in this world who simply fail to believe that Christ will ever return. They look around them and see a world that has seemingly gone on forever–with no significant changes. Who can blame them? Even today, the world really isn’t that much different from New Testament times. Sure, technological and scientific advances have radically changed how we live, governments have come and gone, etc., etc. Yet the fact remains however that we humans still live and die. We each have our own ups and downs–times of success and celebration mixed with times of failure and sorrow. Above all, we all struggle with sin and its ill effects. Nothing substantial has really changed, has it? Sure, some religious nuts might claim that there is a God out there and that said God does plan to come back some day and bring justice and restoration to our world, but then, they’ve been saying that for two thousand years!

So it is that Peter has to remind his fellow believers that yes, God is in control and is at work in the world today. Moreover, God is not asleep or dead, or slow in fulfilling his promise. Rather, God is operating on God’s time, not our time. In His time, generation after generation has been given the opportunity to repent and thereby avoid God’s wrath. Yet generation after generation has instead given up on God just as I gave up on the UPS driver. Refusing to acknowledge that God has created the entire universe and each of us, they despair in ever seeing His handiwork and doubt that there really is a "Big Man Upstairs" who will one day set things right by judging us sinners with righteous wrath.

So what’s the point? The point is this: as we celebrate Advent and the coming of the Christ child, realize that many around you have grown tired of waiting. Perhaps they believed that God could heal their mother dying from cancer or could rescue them from a financially unstable situation only never to have received their miracle (despite the TV evangelist’s promise!). Perhaps they see a world still wracked by war, famine and disease and wonder if God is really a God of love and peace, or if He even exists. Whatever the case, many people have given up on God and become cynical skeptics.

The good news is this: a cynical skeptic is but one step removed from faith–for doubt and faith are two sides of the same coin. All it takes for doubting people to believe is for them to open their eyes and see God at work. We who are Christians HAVE seen God at work in our lives. We just aren’t doing a good job at helping other people open their eyes of faith.
Question: Are you passionately living out your faith? Do you share your experiences of God’s grace and love with others? Or are you like many Christians (including me) who have become cynical and let their doubts triumph over their faith? God IS coming. That’s the message of Advent. Will you be ready?

2 Peter 3:1-10 (NIV)
Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I have written both of them as reminders to stimulate you to wholesome thinking. I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles.

First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation." But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.

But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.