Today, we enter the First Sunday of Advent, and the colours around us have turned to blue: blue for hope, blue for waiting, blue for the dark sky that holds the promise of coming down. We step into a new season of waiting and anticipation.

Our faith begins with Christ, but the story does not hurry straight to Christmas. Advent is more than that. It invites us to reflect on what it means to wait faithfully, attentively, and hopefully. Waiting matters: it is important and necessary when we are waiting for someone we love.

But let me begin with a question. Do you like waiting? I guess it depends, and most of us do not. At least, not for long, and certainly not when we have no idea how long the wait will be.

When my ex-husband and I were still dating, I once waited for him for more than an hour and a half in a coffee shop. It was the early 1980s, long before cell phones. I remember sitting there, watching every person who walked in, feeling my head slowly fill with fumes. When he finally arrived and explained what had happened, I forgot, perhaps a traffic jam or something, my anger melted away.

There were many times of waiting, but my strongest one is waiting for my father. In my mind, he is away more often than he is home, continually assigned to different provinces. My mother and the rest of the family stayed in Seoul for our education, so we waited for him to come home on holidays. Whenever my mother received word of his return, the entire house came alive. We cleaned every corner. My mother cooked his favourite dishes, filling the air with excitement and anticipation.

There is an interesting story there. Once, my sister and I decided to give our mother a homemade facial massage. We believed, quite sincerely, that it was our job to make her look more attractive. We broke an egg, saved the yolk, added a bit of flour, and mixed it together. I don’t remember what else we added. We spread the mixture on her face and waited for it to dry. When we peeled it off, like fine dragonfly wings, it lifted together with her facial hair, and her skin was glowing! She looked transfigured and radiant. But we never repeated the fun treatment, perhaps because my mother found it unnecessary. Whenever we tried to suggest it again, she would tell us, “Enough!” But what I remember most is the sense of joy and anticipation. We were waiting for someone we loved, and the house was filled with life. It was as though the meaning of family had been renewed, and with it a gentle warmth flowed into my heart.

Also the sound and smells from the kitchen. The sizzling of Korean pancakes, the irresistible aroma of sesame oil, the fresh smell of oysters in newly made kimchi, the savoury scent of bean paste soup. Meat was expensive then, and beef even more so, yet my mother would still cook bulgogi for my father, filling the house with its rich, delicious aroma.

Later in my life, I found myself waiting for my daughters after school, after orchestra practice, after volleyball, guitar, and clarinet lessons, and after swim meets that often ended late in the evening. And now I wait in a different way. I wait for grandchildren. This doesn’t mean my two daughters are close to marriage or ready for children. It is simply a joy that God planted in me, a quiet promise whispered some time ago. I imagine bringing them to Sunday school, teaching them Korean words, cooking with them, and making memories as their grandmother.

Waiting is woven into our lives. We wait for birthdays and weddings, for new jobs and test results, for healing and reconciliation, for visits from loved ones, and sometimes simply for courage or clarity. Some waiting is joyful. Some waiting is painful. Some waiting remains mysterious.

But today’s Gospel reading does not speak about the kind of waiting we usually enjoy. Instead of warm lights and gentle music, Jesus gives us scenes that are abrupt and unsettling. Imagine: two people working in a field. Two women grinding grain. In each pair, one is taken, and the other remains. One disappears in a second, the other stays exactly where she was.

What does this mean? Is being taken a good thing or a bad thing? Does it signify a rescue or a judgment? We don’t know for sure, but we do know that these images interrupt us. They refuse to let Advent become too comfortable, too sentimental. They are not like a joyful house coming alive as we wait for someone we love. They are more like a sudden knock on the door in the middle of the night. And perhaps that is why the church places this reading before us today. Advent does not begin with carols. It begins with a call to awaken.

For the people of Israel, talk of the end time was not unusual. It was woven into their scriptures and their imagination. The Book of Daniel and much later Revelation speak of a deep longing for God to intervene and set the world right. Paul carried the same urgent hope. Believing that Christ might return at any moment, he urged people to live with readiness, as if the world could be transformed at any time. Even Jesus says that no one knows the day or the hour, only God.

When the Gospel of Matthew was written around the year 80, the community had already waited for Jesus’ coming for decades. They had endured persecution under Rome. Their temple had been destroyed. Their community scattered. They believed Christ had brought salvation, yet the world still felt fragile and broken. They lived in the tension Paul calls “already and not yet.”

Matthew writes to this weary community not to frighten them but to steady them. He urges them to stay awake, to watch for God’s presence even when life feels uncertain. He does not tell them to abandon their joys: eating, drinking, marrying, and celebrating. He invites them to live their ordinary lives with deeper awareness. God is moving even when the world looks unchanged.

And so, today we stand with Matthew’s community. We too face the major challenges of our time – war, the climate crisis, global inequities, socio-economic injustice, and ongoing threats to human rights. We long for God to step in and rescue the world. Yet, what I sensed in my meditation is God’s invitation for us to act in this time of grace, this in-between time, to embody Isaiah’s vision: swords turned into plowshares, and the world moving toward peace.

I long to see the day when the weapons used in Ukraine, Palestine, and countless other places are finally turned into tools for cultivating the earth.

Until that day, we can live toward it: by becoming peacemakers in our daily lives, by praying and advocating for peace, by building friendships across cultures and faiths, and by choosing leaders and policies that seek justice rather than violence.

This in-between time is a gift from God–overflowing with grace, shaping us, and guiding us to hope. Waiting is not something we merely endure. Waiting can be holy, transformative, the very place where grace finds us and grows us.

Thanks be to God for this grace-filled in-between time. Amen.