Not just wishful thinking... (Watching for Jesus 7)

Scripture for reflection: Isaiah 9:1-7

"We cannot wait for God so ready to resign ourselves to his not coming, so indifferent, so foolish, as we might wait for an increase in salary. No, that would be foolish, meaningless waiting if we really mean God. But if we will not be satisfied with what is offered us today as godlike words, we will go on waiting, with longing, seeking and hoping, until at last, it is God himself who comes to help and to comfort.

"Then our waiting and hoping is not like a piece of wishful thinking, or a fantasy, but life itself. Then we live only because we wait for God. Then there are none of those uncertainties or reservations such as beset those who wait foolishly for foolish things. Then we step forward confidently. Much more, we see ourselves torn out of our former quiet waiting, in which we thought only of ourselves, and are changed within by an overpowering, wonderful happening, which quite without any action on our part simply happens, approaches in God’s time, in God’s future, in his coming to earth. That would be our future of living reality. Thus we live today under the shadow of his coming, not some dreaded disaster or some fate, but the coming of the God of justice, of love, and of peace. Not finding our own way to God into the future, but receiving the future from God. We know that we cannot go to God, but God comes to us, enfolding us in his unbelievable grace, otherwise our life is lost, and our waiting is in vain. We can only wait, watchfully wait; that means passionately waiting, totally deaf to those who would sow doubts in our mind, blind to every power that stands between us and the future which God wills for us. One thing is needful: the conviction that we shall see God, we shall hear God, we shall know God, we shall serve God. In some in comprehensible way, God will--otherwise nothing, absolutely nothing else, counts."

                ~Deitrich Bonhoeffer (in Christmas Sermons)