TRISTAN SHERWIN

‘How long must I see the battle flags

and hear the trumpets of war?’

Jeremiah 4:21 NLT

Advent is a season of groaning.

Heartache, despair, and frustration rise from the hidden places of our souls and take shape as petitions to God. When we whisper, murmur, or even cry out, “How long, O Lord…,” we join an ancient rhythm of worshipful complaint — a prayer form that dares to place the fragility of our fractured world into the hands of God’s redemptive sovereignty. Lament becomes an act of faith: naming what is broken because we believe God has the will and power to heal it.

We often think of Advent as our waiting — a purely human posture of expectation directed toward divine action. But Scripture and the witness of the Church tell a fuller story.

God, too, waits.

God dwells in a season of Advent, yearning for humanity to awaken to the divine vision for this world. God waits for us to embrace justice, to practice mercy, to walk in compassion. If Advent is the ache of our longing for God, it is equally the ache of God’s longing for us — for us to become what we were created to be.

Jürgen Moltmann captures this beautifully:

“The ultimate reason for our hope is not to be found at all in what we want, wish for, and wait for; the ultimate reason is that we are wanted and wished for and waited for… God is our last hope because we are God’s first love. We are God’s dream for his world and his image on the earth he loves. God is waiting for his human beings to become truly human… God is waiting for his image, his echo, his response in us. God isn’t silent. God isn’t dead. God is waiting… God is restless in his Spirit until he finds rest in us and in his world.”

Advent, then, is not merely a countdown to Christmas. It is a shared longing — the human cry for God’s redemption and God’s yearning for humanity’s transformation. Our waiting is woven into God’s waiting, and in that mutual ache, hope is born.