On January 2^nd, I had a series of strong
contractions. They lasted over a minute each, and they came regularly, every
ten minutes, for over an hour. It was 11 p.m. I called the doctor. She said,
“If they get closer together and increase in intensity, come on in.” And then
the contractions stopped.

The contractions motivated us. We bought a minivan. We set
up the bassinet and moved the changing table from William’s room to the
nursery. I scrubbed the dust off the diaper genie. We bought a cute little rug
from Ikea. We have a plan for who will stay with Penny and William, and Peter
wrote a list of things to bring to the hospital. We even have a few friends
with SUV’s who will loan us their car should labor start in during a snowstorm.

But all we’re doing now is waiting. I’ve had a few scattered
contractions, but nothing like that night way back when. There are still things
to do–blogposts to write, in hopes that I can “bank” a few weeks. Penny and
William’s baby books are on my desk, as I endeavor to give them a more-or-less
completed version when this baby arrives. And our daily life goes on–laundry,
bills, groceries, snuggling with the children, dentist and doctors and cupcakes
to Penny’s school for her birthday and…

I want the baby to come. Soon. Now. I want to meet him or her. I want to name her or him. I want to hold the baby in my arms and introduce her/him to Penny and William. I want to start exercising again. I want to eat like a normal human being again. I want.

And yet I hesitate to write any of those thoughts. Because I know the intensity of labor and delivery. I know the trauma my body is about to experience. I know the nights of feeding and rocking and praying for sleep. I know the disruption we are about to experience.

*****

Throughout the Bible, there’s a theme of waiting upon the Lord. In the Old Testament, the Israelites wait four hundred years before they are rescued from Egypt. They wait again when they are taken captive in Babylon. And of course there are centuries of waiting for the promised Messiah. There is an immediacy to their experience of God. And there is a constant sense of longing and waiting and wishing and hoping and clinging to the promise that someday, God’s presence will be even more real.

Jesus comes on the scene, God in the flesh, the one we’ve been waiting for. And yet, for the early Christians and for Christians now, we constantly experience the tension of Jesus already among us–by the power of the Holy Spirit–and Jesus not yet in our midst. We are waiting for the final redemption, when the earth will be made new and there will be “no more mourning or crying or death.”

*****

The fact that I am waiting for this baby doesn’t make the baby any less real. S/he is full-term, ready to enter the world and grow up. And yet I am also waiting, without control over when s/he arrives. I just know it will be soon. Similarly, the fact that I am still waiting for Jesus to return doesn’t make his presence among us any less real. It just makes it harder to see, sometimes.

Soon enough, I will go into labor, and a new life will enter the world.

The Spirit labors now, even as I write, to bring Jesus into our midst. And as with this child, I wait with expectation–with some fear and trembling, and some hope and wonder–for the Lord’s return.