I was raised to first know God as One whom I could rest on and as a ten-letter verb meaning wait: ANTICIPATE! My parents’ foundation was that God was to be trusted and depended on and that He could be anticipated to be a part of all phases of their lives. They had lived through a fire, a flood, some demanding health problems in the larger family, and the struggles of the Depression. They also were led to a settled place and a good job when it was needed and provided with a child by adoption in their 40s when they thought childless was the only word they would know. They might not be able to define what the specific care might be, but they always anticipated that God did know. At 100, bedridden in a nursing home, my mother would speak of her condition in a rusty voice, “Only Jesus knows.” Before I could offer a comforting word, she would continue her litany, “And that is enough.”
Mary listened to an angel and accepted the message: “God has a plan to use you. Anticipate it.” Then she went to visit her cousin, Elizabeth, and the possibility of more than just a happening caused her to break out in a song of joy, the Magnificat! The anticipation of something more than a baby began to grow. Joseph and the Roman government threw in a probable seven-day journey to Bethlehem for God’s plan to match a prophecy. The birth itself might not have met the expectations of the first amazing offer. Shepherds came to share the details of another group of angels in a song-filled sky and left her with an update and an unsure anticipation of what might come. An anticipation she pondered and kept in her heart.
In 1961, to anticipate in faith the trusting of what God might do grew to the anticipation of God’s providing a gift for me. David Smith proposed on July 4, and we married on December 28. My walking down the aisle into David’s smile moved me to anticipate the general idea that God had a plan for a very specific anticipation of love, which overflowed into so many parts of my life. A 57-year marriage, three children, four moves, our beloved South Main church to serve and be served by, and all because of 1 John 4:16, “We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in His love.” That trust is anticipation!
