What Are You Waiting For?

We are currently in a four-part Advent devotional series, where we are praying through the themes of longing and waiting. In our first week, we named that our unfulfilled longings can actually be invitations to find God. Then, last week, we reflected on how God does some of his deepest work when we wait.

Today, I want to invite us to reflect on the four core longings of the human heart as seen in Psalm 42. In other words, I want us to get a little bit deeper and ask the question — this Advent, what are you waiting for?

This Psalm (originally connected to Psalm 43) is ultimately a song of deep longing for God. The author uses metaphors of thirsting for God (like a deer longing for water) and uses some of the most dramatic language in the psalter to express his distress at God’s distance. Have you ever felt like God is distant before — a faint memory rather than a present reality? Do you feel that way this Advent?

The reason for his distress is because of a sense of exile — the psalmist appears to be a levitical priest who used to lead worship in the temple in Jerusalem but who has for some undisclosed reason been separated from his job, his community, and his home. He writes in verse 5 that he is at Hermon, which is in the northernmost part of Israel and close to the headwaters of the Jordan River (which he also references in the psalm) and perhaps explains the frequent use of water imagery in his language. We might imagine him sitting near this waterfall, watching thirsty deers drink, and finally finding language for the anguish that is in his heart.

And, in the psalmist’s cries, we are invited to find language for the longings in our hearts.

Ultimately, what we are all longing for is fulfillment. There is a restless ache core to what it means to be human. 20th-century Catholic theologian writes:

“In the torment of the insufficiency of everything attainable we come to understand that here, in this life, all symphonies remain unfinished.”

Or, as 4th-century theologian St Augustine puts it:

“Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.”

Do any of us find ourselves a little restless this Advent? Feeling unfulfilled in some way? Waiting for something that isn’t here yet?

I think Psalm 42 helps us to name the specific areas where we might be longing for fulfillment. And, I’d love to invite us to find some language for our hearts today.

He writes:

First, we long for vocational fulfillment.

The Psalmist remembers a time when he would lead worshippers in procession to the temple — a priestly responsibility — and he remembers this with thanksgiving and joy. (Note: I say “he” primarily because it is highly unlikely that a woman would have held this particular role in this time period!)

Have you ever felt like the thing that you are doing with your time — parenting, accounting, pastoring, building, creating — is fulfilling at the deepest level of your being?

If I could guess, many of us have had fleeting moments of deep fulfillment as it relates to our vocation or occupation — yet most of our days are probably filled with mundaneness, challenge, and restlessness. Some of us might find ourselves at 30, 40, 50, or even in our later life never having done work that we feel matters.

Or, if we do find ourselves doing fulfilling work, perhaps we find ourselves in a place of financial longing — feeling deeply restless as it relates to our income and standard of living. Are we reaching for more? And, this Advent, does the longing to do something that matters with our time feel particularly resonant?

Second, we long for a place to call home.

The Psalmist finds himself not at home. He remembers God in a place far away from the Jerusalem temple where he seems in a previous season to have felt a sense of belonging and purpose.

Where is “home” for us? Where is the place where we can take a deep breath, and feel like we fit? Some of us find it hard to even articulate where that is — yet there is something in us that knows we are meant to belong somewhere, but due to complications in our family of origin, present relationships, or simply a transient life spent moving to one location to another, we find it hard to name exactly where that is.

Others of us find it easy to name exactly where home is, and yet we are not there. Perhaps we have moved for a job, or maybe others who created that sense of home have left, or, in many cases, trauma has dispaced either us or made it impossible to return to the place where we have found that sense of fitting in.

Do any of us find ourselves longing for home this Advent? What does that longing feel like?

Third, we long for community.

We don’t just long for a place to belong in, we long for a people to belong with. Who are the people with whom you feel seen, known, and deeply enjoyed? Is there anyone, or do we feel like different groups see different pieces of ourselves? Or, do we feel like no one can see us as we really are?

The Psalmist expresses something deeper than the loss of community — he expresses the betrayal of others. His enemies “oppress” and “taunt” him.

Many of us find ourselves more than just longing for fulfilling relationships, we find ourselves deeply hurt and even betrayed by others who did not hold up their end of a relational commitment and have left us with a wound that might feel impossible to heal.

Yet, deep within us, we know that we are made to be with people that we can laugh with and cry with, that see us, know us, and like us. Although this longing transcends romance — many of us either long for a romantic partner with whom we can share life, or find ourselves in a romantic relationship that does not fulfill this ache like we hoped it would.

Are we longing for fulfillment in community this Advent? Have we named this before God?

Lastly, we long for God.

Over and over in Psalm 42 (and Psalm 43, which was probably initially the same psalm), the psalmist repeats this refrain — “Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.”

In other words, he directs each of these longings Godward and confesses that although he longs for fulfillment in vocation, place, and relationships, ultimately only God himself can fulfill the endless longing in the human heart.

This is ultimately what Advent is about: waiting for God’s arrival. Just as Israel waited for the Messiah and Mary and Joseph waited for the birth of Jesus, we wait for Jesus to come back and make all of the wrong things right. Advent is a time not to ignore our desires, but rather to name them and perhaps even grieve that this side of heaven, there will be no unfinished symphonies.

While Advent is a celebration that God can (and will!) come to us in our vocations, in our locations, and in our relationships, we will always find ourselves (this side of heaven) with an “unfinished symphony,” a “restless heart,” as ultimately only God can finish the symphony and bring true rest to our souls.

Advent is a time to name the longing, to name the ache, not to put our hope in circumstances again, but to do the deep inward reorientation required to again “hope in God” and not in a people, place, or position.

Ultimately, we are all waiting for God.

And yet, Advent (and even more so Christmas) is also a time to celebrate that in the midst of our waiting, God has come! Perhaps he has come as a baby in a manger — not at all like we expected he would — yet he has come nonetheless. And in the middle of our waiting, we get the opportunity to build a prayer life that with every fiber of our being cries out:

“Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.”

P.S. Thank you so much for praying with me in this Advent devotional series on longing, waiting, and prayer! If you have a friend or colleague that you think would benefit from these devotionals in which we are seeking to come alive and live in love with Jesus through this blend of contemplative and charismatic spiritualities, please feel free to share my subscribe link with them: ryanpmurphy.beehiiv.com.

P.S.S. Next week, we’ll dive deeper into what it means specifically to wait for God and invite him once again to “come” into our lives as we approach Christmas.