Wishing and Waiting

An Advent moment (originally published in Psaltered, 14 December 2023)

I grew up in the analog world. Bike riding, BB guns, and Saturday morning cartoons were my life. Sitting around for hours was relegated to school and rainy days. There was no such thing as “unwinding” or “chilling out.” When we had free time, we ran away from our houses, found other human beings, and invented things to do.¹

I could never have imagined a digital age. There was no streaming video; an episode aired once, at a specific date and time, and if you missed it, oh well. Better ask one of your friends what happened.

And there was no such thing as “online shopping” because there was no internet. Cyber Monday would have sounded to me like a bad science fiction film. No, if you wanted a toy or new clothes, and they didn’t have it in the store, you would need to write a letter to the company and request they send you a catalog so you could place an order by mail.

A lot of stores had catalogs, but the grandaddy of them all was Sears and Roebuck. If you weren’t around back then, and you don’t know what I’m talking about, imagine a Black Friday sales paper from your favorite retailer. Now, multiply its size by 10 and cram into its pages every single product the company sells. That might sound impossible or ridiculous to some folks, but for centuries ordering by mail was the only way to purchase anything but the everyday items you could find in a general store.

If you were a kid in the 1980’s, The Holy Grail of all catalogs was the Sears Christmas Wish Book. Each year, sometime in October, hundreds of thousands of homes would receive the Sears Christmas catalog in the mail. These books were often as large as 500 pages, with a full 1/3 of their content beings nothing but toys, games, and clothes just for kids.

For weeks, my sister and I would take turns passing the Wish Book back and forth, earmarking pages and circling items we fantasized about owning. We would saddle up to our parents and point out our favorites (which changed every day, of course), hoping they would get the hint, hoping all that work would lead to unwrapping something incredible on Christmas morning.

The Wish Book is a favorite childhood memory of mine. It evokes feelings of nostalgia, yes, but it also reminds me what it felt like to have hopes and dreams without reservation or without making qualifying phrases like, “can’t afford that,” or, “not practical.” Every kid I knew would look at those bright pages and be filled, not with a kind of entitlement fueled by commercialism, but with wonder and genuine longing.

This morning, after my wife had left for work, but while my daughter was still sleeping, I turned off all of the lights in the house, save for the light from our Christmas tree. As I sat there, eyes unfocused and gazing at those tiny white lights, I remembered the season we are in, the season of Advent.

And that is when, still enjoying the quiet of the morning, I started thinking about the Wishbook. I remembered what it felt like to anticipate it showing up in the mailbox, but never knowing exactly when it would appear, what it was like to wait and hope and, yes, even pray that it would hurry up and happen. And so a prayer escaped my lips before I even realized I was speaking.

When will you come, and in what way, and through whom during this Advent? Please, come quickly!

I am filled with wonder and genuine longing as I watch and listen, waiting to see how God will answer my prayer. 

Maranatha!

1. In my day, having to stay inside was considered a punishment. We called it “Restriction.” You had to stay indoors, not have any visits from friends, and only allowed to do things outside of the house related to school or church. It was awful.