December 3: Waiting, Hoping, Longing
♫ Music:
Day 7 - Saturday, December 3
Title: WAITING, HOPING, LONGING
Scripture #1: Romans 8:25–27
But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance. Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.
Scripture #2: Luke 2:25–26
And behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and this man was just and devout, waiting for the Consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ.
Poetry & Poet:
“Prayer”
by John Frederick Nims
We who are nothingness can never be filled:
Never by orchards on the blowing sea,
Nor the rich foam of wheat all summer sunned.
Our hollow is deeper far than treasure can fill:
Helmets of gold swim ringing in the wells
Of our desire as thimbles in the sea.
Love cannot fill us either: children’s love,
Nor the white care of mothers, nor the sweet
Concern of sister nor the effort of friends;
No dream-caress nor actual: the mixed breath,
Lips that fumble in dark and dizzily cling
Till all nerves tighten to the key of love.
The feasted man turns empty eyes about;
The king builds higher on a crumbling base,
His human mouth a weapon; his brain, maps.
The lover awakes in horror: he gropes out
For the known form, and even enfolding, fears
A bed by war or failing blood undone.
For we who are nothingness can nothing hold.
Only solution: come to us, conceiver,
You who are all things, held and holder, come to us,
Come like an army marching the long day
And the next day and week and all that year;
Come like an ocean thundering to the moon,
Drowning the sunken reef, mounting the shore.
Come, infinite answer to our infinite want.
Her ancient crater only the sea can fill.
WAITING, HOPING, LONGING
We stand in the dark—but we are facing the dawn in the East. We can see it coming in the sky, as our picture shows. We are waiting. We are “wait-ers.” We need an “infinite answer to our infinite want.”
As we wait, we are filled with longing, with a need for consolation, like Simeon.
How long, oh Lord? How long?
As we wait, we run out of prayer.
And we find, to our astonishment, that the Holy Spirit has been interceding for us all along—and our prayers of longing become enlivened as we join in the prayers of the Holy Spirit.
He is praying for you right now.
Shocking. Mind-blowing. God Almighty, the Ancient of Days, the “Watcher of Mankind,” as Job calls Him, stoops to intercede for you and me. The Trinity talks amongst Himself on our behalf.
Such a mystery leaves us without words as well. But not without hope.
We will not see Jesus until we die, and so we hope in faith for that day, when we will go Home.
“Here, There, or in the air,” we Moody students used to say to each other as we parted in the 70s, “See you again!” We thought we were so cool. And yet, we meant it, too.
The older I get, the more I long to see Jesus.
For Simeon, it was different…rather than the next big event being death, the next big event was seeing the Messiah. His trajectory was: See the Messiah –> Die –> See the Messiah!
We have his prayer after he had seen and held (!) the baby Jesus: “I’m ready to come Home now, Father, for with these eyes, I have seen the Messiah, the Hope of Israel. I am an eyewitness to the Glory. There’s nothing left for me here, now. I am replete.”
Mary and Joseph recognized a trustworthy soul, and they handed over their precious son to this old stranger. Mary stayed close by, though, close enough for intimate conversation. And holding his Messiah in his wrinkled arms, Simeon prayed and prophesied.
Looking down, he sees his Creator, his Redeemer. And soon, Simeon will see Jesus again—in Eternity, once he dies, falling asleep here and waking in Heaven. He will meet this Savior again, not as a baby, but as a conquering King. And Israel will be consoled, even as Simeon is now.
Think of that meeting and sharing in Heaven: these two Hebrew men who have known both birth and death…Jesus and Simeon.
Simeon sees Jesus and is satisfied. He has waited all his life, day after day, in growing faith in the God Who keeps His promises to console His people, to come to them and make His home with them. The longer he waited, the stronger his faith: “I won’t die until I see my Redeemer.”
It is the Holy Spirit who gave Simeon the patience to wait. It is the Holy Spirit who gives us the patience to suffer long in this life with faith, to be patient and to hope in our God and His promises. Long-suffering, patience, is one fruit that the Holy Spirit develops in us over time. In practice, this looks like perseverance in seemingly unanswered prayer, with watchful expectation—and even suffering with hope.
We don’t give up on opening our hearts to God; indeed, where else would we go? There is no one else who will answer and console us. Like Simeon, we want Him!
Waiting on God demonstrates faith. Waiting instills hope. Waiting for God is predicated on the reality that the invisible spiritual world coexists constantly with the visible physical world, and that God is present and doing something. This faith is the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was “upon” Simeon, indeed: our Romans passage tells us that the Holy Spirit intercedes for all the saints as we wait on God.
Stop and sit with this for a minute—for what are you waiting? About what are you praying? God Himself, the Holy Spirit, prays with you and for you, about that very thing! And so, even as we wait, we hope. We know that there is far more to life than what we see and that our Heavenly Father is present and is attending to us and our concerns. And so we wait with hope.
Psychologically speaking, one of the indicators of maturity is the ability to delay gratification—to wait patiently with desire, yet to wait in hope. It takes maturity to be able to tolerate the tension of unfulfilled longing. Simeon embodies this maturity. He has been faithful in the dark. And now, the Light of the World has come, and Simeon recognizes him.
Our Father God has not left us alone. He has put His Spirit in our hearts, we are signed and sealed and waiting for our final deliverance from these mortal bodies into our heavenly bodies. We are waiting to go Home and to see our living Savior face to face, to know as we are known. And so we remind each other of this and tell the good news: “The night of waiting is almost over, dawn is coming in the East, hold on a little longer, King Jesus is coming soon for us. He came once, He will come again.”
He will come for you. He has promised.
Dr. Betsy Barber
Associate Director of the Institute for Spiritual Formation
Associate Professor of Spiritual Formation and Psychology
Talbot School of Theology
Biola University
For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.
About the Artwork:
#14
Mark Rothko
1960
Oil on canvas
290.83 × 268.29 cm
Collection SFMOMA
Helen Crocker Russell Fund purchase
San Francisco, California
Artist Mark Rothko is known for his canvases featuring arrangements of large rectangular panes of color. Rothko’s paintings may seem like static color fields but if you spend time looking at and contemplating them, you will discover that the canvas radiates a mysterious and incomprehensible inner light. His paintings invite you on an unpredictable journey and into an unknown dimension that often taps into our emotional and psychological state of mind. To experience his paintings one must look at how the colors, shapes, and backgrounds interact with one another, particularly around the edges. Alternate juxtapositions of similar or divergent tones—shades of deep blue against dark purple or bright red against brown—also elicit disparate emotional responses. Despite his devotion to this modern, abstract mode, Rothko derived significant inspiration from ancient, medieval, and Renaissance art and architecture. An erudite researcher, the artist transformed his scholarly understanding of art history into pared-down expressive paintings of color.
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-mark-rothko-unlocked-emotional-power-color
About the Artist:
Mark Rothko (b. 1903) was an American artist of Latvian-Jewish descent. He entered Yale University, leaving two years later. Like his peers, he found his direction and his place in New York. It was there, in 1925, that he began to study at Parsons School of Design under painter Arshile Gorky, who powerfully influenced him and many other abstract expressionists. Gorky and Rothko shared an interest in European surrealism, as evidenced by the biomorphic forms populating their paintings from the early 1940s. For Rothko, these forms would ultimately give way to the floating zones of color over colored grounds for which he would become known. Rothko first developed this compositional strategy in 1947. Described as “Color Field Painting” by critic Clement Greenberg in 1955—a term that stuck—it is a style characterized by significant open space and an expressive use of color. Rothko was one of its pioneers. “His colored rectangles seemed to dematerialize into pure light,” wrote MoMA’s former chief curator of painting and sculpture William S. Rubin. Rothko spent the rest of his career exploring the limitless possibilities of layering variously sized and colored rectangles onto fields of color. By 1968, Rothko’s health was in decline from years of severe anxiety and his related drinking and smoking habits. After surviving an aneurysm, he continued to smoke and drink despite his doctor’s orders, but he did scale back the size of his canvases and switch from oils to acrylic paints to reduce the strain that his painting process placed on his body. In 1970, at 66 years old, the chronically depressed artist committed suicide, leaving behind a body of work that brought him both critical and commercial success during his lifetime.
—Credited to Karen Kedmey, independent art historian and writer, in 2017.
https://www.moma.org/artists/5047
About the Music:
“Advent Suite: Stand Still and Wait, Come Thou Long Expected Jesus, O Come Emmanuel”
from the album Carolsinger
Lyrics;
Stand still and wait for the night to pass over
Under cover of darkness the morning will rise
From the east comes the hope and it's wrapped up in sunrise
So rest, close your eyes, and wait one more hour
Our joy has come in through the sky
Come thou long expected Jesus
Born to set thy people free
From our fears and sins release us
Let us find our rest in thee
Israel's strength and consolation
Hope of all the earth thou art
Dear desire of every nation
Joy of every longing heart
Born thy people to deliver
Born a child and yet a king
Born to reign in us forever
Forever
Rejoice, rejoice Emmanuel
Shall come to thee o’ Israel
So rest, close your eyes, and wait one more hour
About the Performer:
Cynthia Clawson (b. 1948), referred to as the “singer’s singer” and called "the most awesome voice in gospel music" by Billboard Magazine, has received a Grammy and five Dove awards for her work as a songwriter, vocal artist, and musician. Her career has spanned over four decades, with twenty-two albums released since 1974. Clawson has performed in many prestigious venues and with preeminent groups, and her work has been featured in a number of films, including A Trip To Bountiful. Cynthia currently resides in Houston, Texas, and is married to lyricist, poet, and playwright, Ragan Courtney.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynthia_Clawson
https://www.cynthiaclawson.com/
About the Composer/Translator:
"O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" (Latin: "Veni, Veni, Emmanuel") is a Christian hymn for Advent and Christmas. The text was originally written in Latin. “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” is a mid-nineteenth century translation by John Mason Neale and Henry Sloane Coffin of the original Latin text which dates from the eighth century. The text is based on the biblical prophecy from Isaiah 7:14. The 1851 translation by John Mason Neale from Hymns Ancient and Modern is the most prominent by far in the English-speaking world, but other English translations also exist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Come,_O_Come,_Emmanuel
John Mason Neale (1818–1866) was an English Anglican priest, scholar, and hymn writer. He notably worked and wrote on a wide range of holy Christian texts, including obscure medieval hymns, both Western and Eastern. He was educated at Sherborne School, Dorset, and Trinity College, Cambridge. At the age of twenty-two Neale was the chaplain of Downing College, Cambridge, and in 1842 was ordained. In 1854 Neale co-founded the Society of Saint Margaret, an order of women in the Church of England dedicated to nursing the sick. Neale translated the Eastern liturgies into English, and wrote a mystical and devotional commentary on the Psalms. However, he is best known as a hymn writer and, especially, a translator, having enriched English hymnody with many ancient and medieval hymns translated from Latin and Greek. The 1875 edition of the Hymns Ancient and Modern contains fifty-six of his translated hymns and The English Hymnal (1906) contains sixty-three of his translated hymns and six original hymns. His translations include "All Glory, Laud and Honour," "A Great and Mighty Wonder," "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel," "Of the Father's Heart Begotten," "To Thee Before the Close of Day," and "Ye Sons and Daughters of the King."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mason_Neale
About the Poetry & Poet:
John Frederick Nims (1913–1999) was an American poet and academic. Nims
graduated from DePaul University, then from University of Notre Dame with an M.A., and finally from the University of Chicago with a Ph.D. in 1945. He published reviews of the works by Robert Lowell and W. S. Merwin. Nims taught English at Harvard University, the University of Florence, the University of Toronto, Williams College, University of Missouri, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. He was editor of Poetry magazine from 1978 to 1984. The John Frederick Nims Memorial Prize, for poetry translation, is awarded by the Poetry Foundation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Frederick_Nims
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/john-frederick-nims
About the Devotion Author:
Dr. Betsy Barber
Associate Director of the Institute for Spiritual Formation
Associate Professor of Spiritual Formation and Psychology
Talbot School of Theology
Biola University
Betsy Barber has a clinical practice with specialization in the soul care and mental health of Christian workers. She teaches courses in spiritual formation, soul care, missions, maturity, and marital relationships. She has particular interest in spiritual formation and supervision of students in spiritual direction and mentoring. She worked with her husband as a missionary in Bible translation and counseling ministries for twenty-four years. In addition to being a licensed clinical psychologist, she has background and training in spiritual direction.