What Do You Long For? An Advent Reflection

Originally from Detroit, Martha now serves in Orlando, giving leadership to Cru’s Summer Missions. This is the first of in series of advent reflections for this season of hope and anticipation.

What do you long for the most? What is your heart longing for?

If you’re like me, you know that the “right” answer is Christ, yet maybe it’s not your first thought. Mine either. From a young age, I dreamed about the future, and the joy I would experience there. I longed for marriage and family. I was not longing for Christ, but instead for the pleasure that my life would surely give me.

Now, my reality has shifted – I have experienced real pain from unmet expectations, team conflicts, and relationship disappointments. Life doesn’t look the way I had hoped. Some days I feel contentment and satisfaction in my life and ministry, and then there are days when unmet desire drives my heart to ache for something more.

In my brokenness, I catch myself waiting for life to change, to stop delivering sorrow, but it does not and never will. I am longing for this sin-stained world to deliver a better life in vain. But I must be the one to change – to instead long for Jesus as the one who has come to deliver me and save me from this worldly grief.

Psalm 62 invites my desperate soul to find rest and hope in God alone. Verse 8 is where I pause. “Trust in him at all times, O people, pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us.”

This is how I want to move towards God - with an open, soft heart, believing He sees, He knows and is safe. I respond to His invitation to share my sorrows, and shed my tears. I find refuge in His comforting presence. I remember His own suffering on the cross and my reconciled relationship with Him because of His death on my behalf. I grasp the eternal hope held out to me because of His resurrection.

Jesus is the One I am waiting for. Jesus Himself. Jesus is not only my refuge, but He is my strength in weakness. My comfort in sorrow. My shield from the enemy. My hope in the face of despair.

I pray this advent season, you and I would recognize the coming of our Savior into the world is the “thrill of hope” our weary souls ache for!

Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,
Let all within us praise His holy name!*

Come. Let us draw near and worship him, Christ the Lord.

*refrain from O Holy Night