So it’s confession time again.
I suffer from something called “abibliophobia.” Otherwise known as the fear of running out of books to read.
It’s genetic. My dad has it and his dad had it, though I think my dad is still living in denial and thinks that he’s just a book collector.
But the one thing my dad does have going for him is that he has a library card and has no problem purchasing used books.
I, on the other hand, like my books brand new—fresh, so new the pages are still stuck together.
Unfortunately, my abibliophobia and my need for brand new books has caused some serious hurt to my bank account. Having abibliophobia means I have literally hundreds of unread books on my Kindle and in my home. I can read a book a day and still not make a dent in my pile. And my bank account just can’t take it.
So a few weeks ago, I broke down and got a library card.
I got home. I downloaded the app on my ipad and I began searching for one of the books I wanted to read right that second.
I found it.
Its waitlist was something like twenty people deep.
My estimated wait time for this book I needed right that second? Six months.
Six months.
We live in a world today of instant gratification.
We used to live in a time of waiting. We used to live in a time when It’s a Wonderful Life and The Wizard of Oz came on TV once a year and if you missed it, you missed it. You had to wait a whole year to see it again.
Now we can download movies and books and songs in a second. In fact, if it takes longer than a second, we start to get anxious.
We don’t have it in us to wait anymore.
For example, I always get strange looks when the tire place or the oil change place tells me it will be an hour or more and I say, “Okay, I’ll wait.”
I got even stranger looks the other day when I was waiting for my oil change and I sat in the waiting room with two elderly men both on ipads and me with a book—like a physical book—made of paper.
My doctor’s office used to hand out giftcards if you had to wait more than thirty minutes in their waiting room.
No one wants to wait anymore.
We want instant gratification.
It’s why I sort of imagine Abram (soon to be Abraham) in today’s reading maybe—just maybe—being a little disappointed in God’s “good news.”
The reading begins with Abram telling God how unhappy he is that he is childless, that he has no heir.
And what does God tell him?
He says in Genesis 15:5, “Look toward heaven and count the stars … so shall your descendants be.”
And we are told Abram believed Him.
But then I imagine Abram staring up at those stars. What must he be thinking?
“Wow, that’s amazing!”
Or, “Wow, that’s amazing, but I won’t live long enough to see it.”
And then God gets a little more specific with Abram.
He tells him that his descendants will be enslaved for four hundred years, but at the end of that time, God will reward them and lift them up.
And again, I imagine Abram thinking … “But I won’t live long enough to see it.”
I mean people did live a very long time in those days. Abraham, himself, would live to be 175 years old.
But all of this that God is promising Abram … Abram will see none of it.
Well, except for one thing … God has promised Abram an heir. Surely, he will be around to see that.
But Abram is old and his wife, Sarai (soon to be Sarah) is old, and the odds of them having a child together, despite God’s promise, seem poor, so Sarai and Abram do what so many of us have done. They try and rush God. They try and find their own path to God’s promise. And Sarai convinces Abram to lay with Hagar and have a child with her, instead.
Abram is eighty-six when Hagar gives birth to Ishmael. And of course, as this was not part of the original plan, there are consequences for all involved.
God does, though, ultimately, fulfill his promise to Abram and when Abram is ninety-nine and Sarai is ninety, Sarai becomes pregnant and eventually gives birth to Isaac.
God’s timing is God’s timing, and it often requires a lot of waiting and a whole lot of faith.
We are now in the season of Advent, a time of waiting.
When I was a little kid, December days were filled with anticipation—for Christmas and Santa and gifts, and yes there was the baby Jesus in there somewhere, but—you know—the gifts!
How I loved Christmas! How l loved the days leading up to Christmas! But you know what the worst day of the year was?
December 26, the day after.
Because as it turns out, the true joy wasn’t Christmas day, it was the anticipation of Christmas, the month of opening little doors on the Advent calendar and traveling to be with family, the smell of pine (and sometimes the smell of that spray on snow my mom used once). It was Christmas Carols and snow and holiday movies and Charlie Brown and his poor little tree.
But then it was over.
How many kids do you know who have begged for a gift all year and when they open it on Christmas, they play with it an hour and then it magically disappears under their bed or into a closet?
That because the better joy, the ultimate joy, is in the wanting.
The joy in receiving is fleeting.
But the joy that comes with anticipation is something that is continuously building.
Advent—these weeks leading up to Christmas—symbolize a greater need.
Because we are still waiting. Two thousand years later, we are still waiting. Look into the sky at night. Abraham’s descendants are as numerous as the stars. He didn’t live to see it, but we see it now.
We are still waiting for Jesus to return and the fact that we are still waiting should not make us sad, should not create in us this wistful, mournful, longing.
Instead, as we wait for Jesus’ return, we should be joyful.
We should relish and live in and inhabit daily that joy.
Jesus is coming.
Amen.
I suffer from something called “abibliophobia.” Otherwise known as the fear of running out of books to read.
It’s genetic. My dad has it and his dad had it, though I think my dad is still living in denial and thinks that he’s just a book collector.
But the one thing my dad does have going for him is that he has a library card and has no problem purchasing used books.
I, on the other hand, like my books brand new—fresh, so new the pages are still stuck together.
Unfortunately, my abibliophobia and my need for brand new books has caused some serious hurt to my bank account. Having abibliophobia means I have literally hundreds of unread books on my Kindle and in my home. I can read a book a day and still not make a dent in my pile. And my bank account just can’t take it.
So a few weeks ago, I broke down and got a library card.
I got home. I downloaded the app on my ipad and I began searching for one of the books I wanted to read right that second.
I found it.
Its waitlist was something like twenty people deep.
My estimated wait time for this book I needed right that second? Six months.
Six months.
We live in a world today of instant gratification.
We used to live in a time of waiting. We used to live in a time when It’s a Wonderful Life and The Wizard of Oz came on TV once a year and if you missed it, you missed it. You had to wait a whole year to see it again.
Now we can download movies and books and songs in a second. In fact, if it takes longer than a second, we start to get anxious.
We don’t have it in us to wait anymore.
For example, I always get strange looks when the tire place or the oil change place tells me it will be an hour or more and I say, “Okay, I’ll wait.”
I got even stranger looks the other day when I was waiting for my oil change and I sat in the waiting room with two elderly men both on ipads and me with a book—like a physical book—made of paper.
My doctor’s office used to hand out giftcards if you had to wait more than thirty minutes in their waiting room.
No one wants to wait anymore.
We want instant gratification.
It’s why I sort of imagine Abram (soon to be Abraham) in today’s reading maybe—just maybe—being a little disappointed in God’s “good news.”
The reading begins with Abram telling God how unhappy he is that he is childless, that he has no heir.
And what does God tell him?
He says in Genesis 15:5, “Look toward heaven and count the stars … so shall your descendants be.”
And we are told Abram believed Him.
But then I imagine Abram staring up at those stars. What must he be thinking?
“Wow, that’s amazing!”
Or, “Wow, that’s amazing, but I won’t live long enough to see it.”
And then God gets a little more specific with Abram.
He tells him that his descendants will be enslaved for four hundred years, but at the end of that time, God will reward them and lift them up.
And again, I imagine Abram thinking … “But I won’t live long enough to see it.”
I mean people did live a very long time in those days. Abraham, himself, would live to be 175 years old.
But all of this that God is promising Abram … Abram will see none of it.
Well, except for one thing … God has promised Abram an heir. Surely, he will be around to see that.
But Abram is old and his wife, Sarai (soon to be Sarah) is old, and the odds of them having a child together, despite God’s promise, seem poor, so Sarai and Abram do what so many of us have done. They try and rush God. They try and find their own path to God’s promise. And Sarai convinces Abram to lay with Hagar and have a child with her, instead.
Abram is eighty-six when Hagar gives birth to Ishmael. And of course, as this was not part of the original plan, there are consequences for all involved.
God does, though, ultimately, fulfill his promise to Abram and when Abram is ninety-nine and Sarai is ninety, Sarai becomes pregnant and eventually gives birth to Isaac.
God’s timing is God’s timing, and it often requires a lot of waiting and a whole lot of faith.
We are now in the season of Advent, a time of waiting.
When I was a little kid, December days were filled with anticipation—for Christmas and Santa and gifts, and yes there was the baby Jesus in there somewhere, but—you know—the gifts!
How I loved Christmas! How l loved the days leading up to Christmas! But you know what the worst day of the year was?
December 26, the day after.
Because as it turns out, the true joy wasn’t Christmas day, it was the anticipation of Christmas, the month of opening little doors on the Advent calendar and traveling to be with family, the smell of pine (and sometimes the smell of that spray on snow my mom used once). It was Christmas Carols and snow and holiday movies and Charlie Brown and his poor little tree.
But then it was over.
How many kids do you know who have begged for a gift all year and when they open it on Christmas, they play with it an hour and then it magically disappears under their bed or into a closet?
That because the better joy, the ultimate joy, is in the wanting.
The joy in receiving is fleeting.
But the joy that comes with anticipation is something that is continuously building.
Advent—these weeks leading up to Christmas—symbolize a greater need.
Because we are still waiting. Two thousand years later, we are still waiting. Look into the sky at night. Abraham’s descendants are as numerous as the stars. He didn’t live to see it, but we see it now.
We are still waiting for Jesus to return and the fact that we are still waiting should not make us sad, should not create in us this wistful, mournful, longing.
Instead, as we wait for Jesus’ return, we should be joyful.
We should relish and live in and inhabit daily that joy.
Jesus is coming.
Amen.
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