Faithful waiting

Wednesday of the Third Week of Advent

I remember you Name in the night, O Lord,
and dwell upon your law.
Psalm 119:55

I come fully awake and look toward my clock with a sense of resignation. I am right. It is 3:00am. A cough has woken me up and though I get up and take cold medicine, I know it will be a while before I can get back to sleep.

So, I do what my mother taught me years ago, I begin a prayer. My prayer is not asking God to help me get back to sleep, but a conversation. Since I am awake in the middle of the night, what better use of my time than to spend it with God. My mother had a gift for prayer. She knew how to turn any time of waiting into praying. I think for her they were one and the same. I remember her favorite chair, radiating her lifelong faithfulness whether she was sitting in it or not.

Advent calls on us to be awake. Who else is awake with me in the early hours? Mary, pregnant and restless? Shepherds on the night watch? The joyful, the grief-laden, the weary, the lost, the comforters, the expectant? Come, Jesus, come.