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A reflection and prayer to start the day with the Revd Dr Craig Gardiner, a tutor at Cardiff Baptist College.

Good morning. The other day my family were waiting in a long queue of Christmas traffic edging towards the ever-changing greens and reds and ambers of the lights.

My passengers were already on their smart phones so I asked them when traffic lights were invented. It was actually today, back in 1868, in Westminster. Those lights were really a modified system of railway signals during the day, with red and green gas illuminations shining through the night, instructing the traffic to stop and wait.

The traffic on our journey didn’t like delays, but few of us do like waiting, especially in this internet age when we are used to downloading, messaging and getting all sorts of things to happen now…like discovering when traffic lights were invented. Indeed, even as my traffic lights turned green, I was urging those in front of me to ‘get a move on, quick.’ Waiting seems to be such a waste of time. But it need not be so.

These weeks before Christmas, known in the church as Advent, are when Christians prepare for the birth of Jesus, knowing it is imminent, but that it hasn’t happened yet, and so we are told to wait. But this waiting has a purpose. If Christmas promises ‘joy to the world’, then these days of anticipation offer us an opportunity to pause amidst life’s busy traffic. This is our chance to stop long enough to think about what would truly bring us joy.

Each of us might answer that question rather differently, but stopping and waiting for the answer, might at least remind us, that happiness is not always found in moving quickly up the queue or rushing through our lives.

God of all waiting,
Who welcomes our pause,
help us to discover joy in the delays,
and wonder in the waiting we encounter today,
as we stop,
even for a minute,
that we might be filled with your presence
Amen