The Heart & Soul of Advent

Psalms 130
By Harold Dinsmore, M.Div.
© 2007 Harold Dinsmore

The heart and soul of Advent is something we experience almost every day to some degree in all of our lives.  We experience it on the way to work, we experience it at the doctor’s office, we experience it at a restaurant, we experience it at the grocery store and we even experience it when we are expecting a baby and we experience it in school.  Have you figured out what the it is?  We wait.  We are a bunch of waiters in the USA.  Waiting in lines, we all have to endure it from time to time. Waiting in waiting rooms, waiting in check-out lines, waiting to fall asleep, or one of my least favorites – waiting in traffic. According to an NPR report last year, the average American spends two to three years of his or her life waiting in line.

               But waiting is the heart and soul of waiting.  Mark D. Roberts on his website reports “no Psalm does a better job expressing the inner spirit of Advent. In fact, no chapter in the whole Bible is more thoroughly an "Advent-chapter"[1] as Psalms 130.  “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord;  O Lord, hear my voice.  Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy.  If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand?  But with you there is forgiveness; therefore you are feared. I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning. O Israel, put your hope in the Lord, for with the Lord is unfailing love and with him is full redemption.  He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins.”