God's coming cannot be forced or coerced. It comes only as a gift. And as a gift, we must wait for the giver. But this waiting itself, even if painful and characterized by a felt absence, is the reception of God's gift of God's-self.
See, we can only truly long for the presence of one who is already present to us. We can long for someone, in the abstract, who is absent and unknown, but we can only long for God, in the particular sense of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who fully revealed himself in Jesus of Nazareth, this God we can only long for as his very presence creates in us the longing we feel for his presence.
So, may we, in our Advent longing for God's presence, sit in both anguished longing and the peace of God's presence, for they belong, indeed can only exist, together.
