Today's Scripture: Galatians 6:7-10 (read Scripture)
Bobby had a hard time waiting. The Oreo in front of him looked and smelled so good. And he wanted to eat it. But the cookie man had said, "Bobby, you can eat the cookie now or wait until I come back. If you wait, I'll give you two cookies."
Repeatedly, scientists have run this experiment with kids of all sorts. Some kids waited, some did not. Amazingly, the studies showed that the kids who waited did better in school. They had fewer problems with hyperactivity or attention-deficit behavior. More grew into stable, well-adjusted adults.
I don't know how you would do with the "eat-one-now-or-get-two-later" test. But you've lived long enough to know that qualities such as patience or perseverance are difficult to develop. The world doesn't help us. Everywhere we turn we are tempted to have it now, do it now, don't wait. Yet we know that so many things that are worthwhile come to us only in the long run.
God's Christmas gift was one of those things. For centuries, God's people looked and longed for the one God would send. And he came!
Paul's words in Galatians remind us that waiting means we don't give up. We don't give up on the future, and we don't give up on God. We don't give up on the tasks God has set before us. We don't think today is all there is. We do live in the present for the future. Waiting isn't a matter of clock-watching or calendar-watching. The old hymn says, "Work for the night is coming."
But there is a dawn coming, too. There is something waiting for you and me far better than anything this world has to offer. So as for me, I think I'll wait for the man with two cookies.
Albert F. Bean is a retired professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City.
This 2011 Advent devotion originally appeared in the November 17 issue of Word&Way.