Week 1: Expectation
Thank you for taking the time to sit with our annual Advent Devotionals. As we move into a busy month of exams and holiday preparation, we invite you to sit with the words of members of the TCU community. Our second devotional comes from Cameron Potter, TCU’s Assistant Director of Campus Recreation. You can find him enjoying the outdoors or promoting TCU’s vast outdoor programming.
Words to ponder
“Now faith is being confident of what we hope for, convinced about things we do not see.” Heb. 11:1
Never was much good at hoping, until you took my heart and tore it open. – Ben Rector
Wait with expectation
In this season of advent – we celebrate the wait. The wait for vacation, the wait for Christmas, the wait for lazy mornings with cold weather (it will happen eventually!). Waiting – with confidence and expectation – is a powerful thing. We witness the power of ‘waiting with expectation’ near the end of every semester, as students forgo sleep and binge on coffee all night at the library. The willingness to sacrifice their health on the altar of academia is due to the hope – no, the expectation – that their efforts will pay off in the future.
Advent reminds us that there is more than good grades to hope for – more than public recognition or a promotion at work. Advent reminds us that the incarnation of deity into moral form is destined to reconcile a broken and hurting world to a loving and patient God.
But how do we keep waiting – keep expecting – the world to be made new when we witness so much heartbreak? For me personally, this past year has been filled with much joy, and much heartbreak. Most tragically this year, a good family friend lost their 1 year-old son to a heart condition he had been battling since birth. Of his 53 weeks on earth, 51 had been spent in the hospital. Questions swirled through my head; “Why not heal his little body?”, “Why allow him to live for a year only to take him?” I don’t know the answers to these questions. I do know that I’m resolved more than ever to wait with expectation for the world to be made new – and that confident expectation allows me to weather the storms of life without being tossed about.
Let us pray
Lord, may I wait for you with expectation. May the focus of my hope not be stolen by the near and temporal. May I not grow hard-hearted in the midst of a broken world, but may my hope in you strengthen my resolve to wait for You with a tender heart.
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