Eager Anticipation

The waiting is the hardest part
Every day you see one more card
You take it on faith, you take it to the heart
The waiting is the hardest part –Tom Petty

Every year some celebrity dies, and though we have no personal relationship with theses artists or actors, we feel a connection to them through their body of work. So, I was sad to hear of Tom Petty’s death this year. The Heartbreakers were integral to my life’s soundtrack. I went Freefallin’ from middle school into high school. I’ve tried to best my 10k time while Running Down a Dream. I have imagined vocational opportunities through Into the Great Wide Open, chided my kids with the chorus of Yer So Bad, sang along to Don’t Come Around Here No More in the face of a bad break-up, and celebrated my own identity and becoming with songs like Learning to Fly, and You Don’t Know How it Feels (to be me). And more. When I first picked up my guitar, in earnest, Tom Petty songs were among the first songs I learned to play.

It is Tom Petty’s The Waiting which captures, for me, the eager anticipation of Advent. The verses describe the happiness and elation of the moment, “Oh baby don’t it feel like heaven right now/ Don’t it feel like something from a dream/ Yeah I’ve never known nothing quite like this/ Don’t it feel like tonight might never be again,” and the chorus declares, “The waiting is the hardest part.”

As I read Petty’s lyrics, I think he is describing a longing to be reunited with the one you love, but certainly we have all experienced the existential angst of waiting. We feel this in pre-performance butterflies, on sleeplessness nights before our wedding days, hope for the birth of a child, or before job interviews. We are excited about what lies ahead, and find it hard to just be in the moment.

The Psalmist cry, “How long?” has something of The Waiting eagerness in it, even if it feels a little bit angstier. The Hebrew poets, lamented the state of things in their world, their personal experience and their nation.  They looked honestly at how hard things were, but dared to hope that God’s deliverance lay ahead. Psalm 13 captures this dissatisfaction with what is, but hopeful longing for God’s future action:

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I bear pain in my soul,
and have sorrow in my heart all day long?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?
Consider and answer me, O Lord my God!
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death,
and my enemy will say, “I have prevailed”;
my foes will rejoice because I am shaken.

But I trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord,
because he has dealt bountifully with me.

The Waiting is the hardest part, and this is especially true as we wait through feelings of alienation, sorrow, defeat and failure.

Other psalms decry ongoing injustices, the triumph of the wicked, and oppression of the poor and marginalized. All in the strong hope that God will act, God will be salvation, God will deliver, restore, heal. It is hard to wait, but Jesus is coming and there is hope.

Don’t let it kill you baby, don’t let it get to you
Don’t let ’em kill you baby, don’t let ’em get to you
I’ll be your breathing heart, I’ll be your crying fool
Don’t let this go to far, don’t let it get to you

The Waiting is the hardest part.

What are you waiting for? What are you waiting through? What brings you hope?