Celebrating Advent means learning how to wait. —Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dec. 2, 1928

As parents and grandparents, we’ve inevitably experienced the impatience of our children and grandchildren as they look longingly upon the wrapped gifts under the Christmas tree and plead, “Can’t we open just one? It’s too hard to wait!” We can empathize, remembering the long December days of our childhood, the excruciating countdown until Christmas. As children and adults, we’re not generally a patient sort. We take speed for granted as we order fast food, rely upon two-day Amazon deliveries, and depend on the Internet to bring us information in seconds. Patience is a virtue we consign to the saints who live among us.

Bonhoeffer understood the challenge in waiting:

Not all can wait – certainly not those who are satisfied, contented, and feel that they live in the best of all possible worlds!  Those who learn to wait are uneasy about their way of life, but yet have seen a vision of greatness in the world of the future and are patiently expecting its fulfillment. The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come.

When I read the words from his 1928 Advent sermon, I was struck by his claim that only “those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come” are truly able to celebrate Advent. Traditionally, we celebrate the joy of the season as we sing about peace on earth and goodwill to all. Oh, we have our Blue Christmas services, but we often fail to do much more than pay lip service to “those who are troubled in soul” as we bustle about with holiday cheer. Bonhoeffer’s words should challenge us.

I confess that, for most of my life, I’ve been an impatient person. I’ve been a hard worker bent on getting the job done—and getting it done quickly. Or at least in a timely fashion. And through all this working and striving, I’ve been taught powerful lessons about waiting. From childhood, I dreamt of being a mother. This dream was fueled, in part, by the wonderful example of my own mother. I wanted to grow up to be just like her, for I couldn’t imagine a better life than the one she’d given my siblings and me. But my road to motherhood was fraught with infertility, miscarriage, pregnancy, adoption, and much waiting. Waiting for test results, waiting for surgeries, waiting for communication from our adoption caseworkers, waiting for paperwork, waiting and waiting and waiting. I was “troubled in soul” and found my barren self woefully “poor and imperfect”. No matter how hard I worked, no matter what plans I made or medications I took, I was left childless.

For a time, I wondered if God might be punishing me. In search of a theological explanation for my infertility, I read Rabbi Harold Kushner’s 1981 book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. As I bought yet another pregnancy test or contacted another adoption agency, I felt my hope and resolve flounder. And I grew weary of waiting, weary of worry, weary of being weary. But through the weariness, God was teaching me that in the waiting, He was preparing me for “something greater to come.”

In his Letters and Papers from Prison, Bonhoeffer writes:

Life in a prison cell may well be compared to Advent; one waits, one hopes, and does this, that, or the other—things that are really of no consequence—the door is shut, and can be opened only from the outside.

This is the lesson I was learning: to stop rattling the door of my own cell—the prison of work and worry I’d created—and to accept it could only be opened from the outside—and only by God. I’d like to say that I was a quick learner, but regrettably, I wasn’t. I would surrender my hopes and fears to God, only to pick them back up again. One night, I would pray, “not my will, Lord, but yours be done,” only to lie awake the following night as I made plans about what I might try next. I learned slowly. I surrendered in fits and starts. I came to understand that my true poverty and imperfection had less to do with my fertility and much more to do with my human nature. And I came to know the truth and solace of Psalm 121: From where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord.

I’ve been blessed with two births and two adoptions, four incredible children for whom I’d prayed. I’ve told Quinn’s adoption story many times. I’ve recounted the day we traveled to the Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, where our caseworker would bring our new son from Columbus, Georgia, two days before Christmas. Because of complications—winter weather and adoption paperwork destined for government offices in Des Moines delayed on a FedEx truck beleaguered with Christmas deliveries—we had to wait six hours for confirmation to leave Minnesota and legally enter Iowa with Quinn. For most of my life, I’d been notoriously bad at this kind of waiting. On this day, the hours without confirmation seemed interminable. At one point, I looked up from the sweet face of my sleeping son to find our caseworker pacing the floor, fraught with worry, and perspiration running down her temples. She announced that, if the paperwork hadn’t arrived in Des Moines by 4:30 (the time that government offices would close for Christmas), she would have to fly Quinn back to Georgia, and we could try the adoption transfer again sometime after the New Year. I looked at the clock and saw we had 30 minutes. But I was uncharacteristically calm, wholly besotted with Quinn as others bustled about me. And in the waiting, I felt the peace of surrender. There was nothing anyone could humanly do at this point, but God could—and did. At 4:25, we received phone confirmation that the paperwork had arrived, and we could take Quinn home.

Imprisoned and sentenced to death by the Nazis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer understood much about waiting. Like the Apostle Paul, he wrote from his prison cell with the joy and certainty of a vision of greatness in the world of the future and the expectation that this vision would be fulfilled. For both men, there was joy in the waiting for something greater to come. We wait to celebrate Christ’s birth in these final days of the Advent season, remembering God’s humility in entering the world as a child and suffering on a cross. And as we wait, may we be assured of Christ’s sacrificial love and the promise of something greater to come.

P.S. My sweet Christmas boy, Quinn, and his wife, LIndsay, are expecting. There is much joy in the waiting for the birth of their son this summer!

The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation. They say that God became Man. Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this. –-C. S. Lewis, Miracles

C. S. Lewis contends the Incarnation is the “central miracle” of Christianity, that all other miracles reveal and result from it. During Advent, we celebrate this central miracle, the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us. But as we remember this miracle, I’d also like to consider the miracle of Old Testament prophecy.

There are over 300 prophecies in the Old Testament regarding the coming Messiah. Centuries before Christ was born in Bethlehem, prophets foretold the circumstances regarding and the significance of his birth, life, and death. In the books of Genesis, Isaiah, Zechariah, Psalms, Jeremiah, Numbers, 2 Samuel, Hosea, Malachi, Micah, and Daniel, prophets foretold that Jesus would:

• be born of a virgin in Bethlehem
• come from the line of Abraham and from the tribe of Judah
• be an heir to King David’s throne
• be called Immanuel
• spend a season in Egypt
• be rejected and despised by his own people
• be a Nazarene
• be declared Son of God
• speak in parables
• be a light in the darkness
• enter Jerusalem on a donkey
• be betrayed and falsely accused
• be hated without cause and crucified with criminals
• suffer—his hands, feet, and side pierced
• pray for his enemies even as he suffered and died
• be a sacrifice, an atonement for human sin
• ascend into heaven and be seated at the right hand of God
• return as Messiah a second time

Each Advent season, we hear some of the most quoted prophecies from Isaiah:

“Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call Him Immanuel.” Isaiah 7:14

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” Isaiah 9:6

“But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities.” Isaiah 53:5

That there are so many other prophecies in so many other Old Testament books, however, should give us pause. It gives me pause, for the number and accuracy of these prophecies are miraculous. It seemed miraculous to American mathematician and astronomer Professor Peter Stoner, too. Stoner was a co-founder of the American Scientific Affiliation, a professional organization for Christians in the scientific field. In his book, Science Speaks (first published in 1958), he and Robert Newman (who held a doctorate in theoretical astrophysics from Cornell University, a M.Div. from Faith Theological Seminary, and an S.T.M. in Old Testament from Biblical Theological Seminary) explore the statistical improbability of one man fulfilling just eight of these prophecies. After statistical calculations, they determined the odds of one man fulfilling even eight of these Old Testament prophecies are one in one hundred quadrillion. To help math-challenged people like me, they offer the following scenario as explanation:

Suppose that we take 100,000,000,000,000,000 dollars and lay them on the face of Texas. They will cover all of the state two feet deep. Now mark one of these silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly, all over the state. Blindfold a man and tell him that he can travel as far as he wishes, but he must pick up one silver dollar and say that this is the right one. What chance would he have of getting the right one? Just the same chance that the prophets would have had of writing these eight prophecies and having them all come true in any one man, from their day to the present time, providing they wrote using their own wisdom.

Ultimately, Stoner and Newman concluded that “[n]o human being has ever made predictions which hold any comparison to those we have considered, and had them accurately come true. The span of time between the writing of these prophecies and their fulfillment is so great that the most severe critic cannot claim that the predictions were made after the events happened.”

If the statistical improbability of one man fulfilling eight of the Old Testament prophecies is one in one hundred quadrillion, just imagine the odds of this same man fulfilling 300 such prophecies. Mathematically, this is beyond what I can comprehend. It’s a miracle of unimaginable proportions. And it gives weight to C. S. Lewis’ claim that myth becomes fact as these prophecies are ultimately realized in Christ’s birth, life, death, and resurrection.

The central miracle of Christianity is, as Lewis contends, the Incarnation. In his personal correspondence, he wrote:

God could, had He pleased, have been incarnate in a man of iron nerves, the Stoic sort who lets no sigh escape Him. Of His great humility, He chose to be incarnate in a man of delicate sensibilities who wept at the grave of Lazarus and sweated blood in Gethsemane.

Lewis understood the “humiliation of myth into fact, of God into man.” He understood this humility—a man who weeps, sweats blood, and suffers on a cross—would lead to greater glory. And he understood that “every other miracle prepares for this [God becoming man], or exhibits this, or results from this.” As we celebrate the miracle and mystery of the Incarnation, I’d like to remember the miracle of prophecy, too. I confess that, until recently, I hadn’t given this much thought. Yet, as I have considered this (with the help of mathematicians who understand probability), I’ve been humbled and astonished by the incredible odds of one man fulfilling even eight of the 300 prophecies about Jesus. I can’t help but think of Stoner’s example: the odds of one man fulfilling eight prophecies are akin to a blindfolded man attempting to locate one marked silver dollar out of one hundred quadrillion silver dollars scattered across the state of Texas.

And I confess it gives me pause to consider the realization of just one prophecy. I’m astounded by the realization of Micah’s prophecy, written 700-800 years before Christ’s birth, announcing that the “ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times” would come from Bethlehem, “small among the clans of Judah.” It is in the spirit of this wonder that I prepare for the birth of the Christ child, for the man who “wept at the grave of Lazarus and sweat blood in Gethsemane,” and for the Savior who was “pierced for our transgressions.”

Have you not often felt in Church, if the first lesson is some great passage, that the second lesson is somehow small by comparison—almost, if one might say so, humdrum? So it is and so it must be. That is the humiliation of myth into fact, of God into Man; what is everywhere and always, imageless and ineffable, only to be glimpsed in dream and symbol and the acted poetry of ritual becomes small, solid—no bigger than a man who can lie asleep in a rowing boat on the Lake of Galilee. You may say that this, after all, is a still deeper poetry. I will not contradict you. The humiliation leads to a greater glory. But the humiliation of God and the shrinking or condensation of the myth as it becomes fact are also quite real. –-C. S. Lewis, “Transposition,” The Weight of Glory

Myths are narratives that help explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon. They feature supernatural beings, heroes, and incredible journeys of triumph and loss. There are creation and moral myths, hero and trickster myths. Regardless of the type, most of us prefer them, like our fast food meals, super-sized. Anything less than a super-sized Atlas would collapse under the weight of the world. Arnold Schwarzenegger may have won the Mr. Olympia title eight times, but he could never throw a lightning bolt. For that feat, you need a super-sized strong man. You need the mythic Zeus, the Greek god of gods.

To “humiliate a myth,” to degrade and humble it, seems counterintuitive. It seems wrong. As humans, we’re limited by mortality and subject to natural forces that are indifferent, at best, and hostile, at worst. As myth consumers, it would seem foolish then to stand in line, only to place an order for a small myth (no extras). Consider the confused employee: “Excuse me, did you say a small myth? After centuries of typhoons, earthquakes, derechos, fire, drought, acts of unimaginable violence, and war, you want a small myth?” And you can imagine the talk in the break room: “Get this, some guy just ordered a small myth! Who does that?”

Yes, who does that? Who would have the audacity to humble the almighty myth? Who would dare transmute the glory of God into something small, solid—no bigger than a man who can lie asleep in a rowing boat on the Lake of Galilee? And who would consider something even smaller still? Not the Greeks, whose goddess Athena’s birth is legendary. Springing from her father, Zeus’s, head, she is born fully armed and ready for battle. Here is myth exalted, myth super-sized. But consider the birth of Jesus, who neither sprang from God’s head or—as the Norse giants, the Jotuns did—from the sweat of their father Ymir’s armpits (unpleasant but the stuff great myths are made of). Instead, Jesus came to earth as a baby—vulnerable, hungry, and placed in an animal trough. As Christian author C. S. Lewis writes, this is the humiliation of myth into fact, God into man. If God were attempting to out-myth the Greeks or the Norse, he might’ve had Jesus born as a superhero whose powers exceed all the Greek and Norse gods combined. If he were trying to make the New York Times bestseller list or sell rights for a feature film, he’d most likely receive polite but emphatic rejection letters: Thanks, but no thanks. Our readers/viewers would find your protagonist too colloquial and his birth story uninspired.

But God entered the world, not as a being imageless and ineffable, only to be glimpsed in dream and symbol, not as a myth but a human. Who does that? What god enters the world and lives among its inhabitants as a human, breaching the barrier between the immortal and the mortal? And who peoples his story with shepherds and innkeepers, tax collectors and census takers? God does, and herein lies the great paradox of how humiliation leads to a greater glory. Because we know how the story ends: how the humiliation of a birth in a stable and the agony of a death on a cross lead to a greater glory.

During Advent, we remember how the Christmas story begins—and ends. The world was a dark place at the time of Christ’s birth, as it continues to be today. But we come to the manger, blessed by a Savior, who is Emmanuel, God with us. We come, preparing our hearts for the mystery of the Incarnation: “the humiliation of myth into fact, God into man.” This is a mystery that continues to confound and amaze us. O come, let us adore Him.

Luke 2: 8-20

⁸ And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. ⁹ An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. ¹⁰ But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. ¹¹ Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. ¹² This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

¹³ Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

¹⁴ “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
    and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

¹⁵ When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

¹⁶ So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. ¹⁷ When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, ¹⁸ and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. ¹⁹ But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. ²⁰ The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.