All Creation Waits
Rev. Amy Sutherlun
These two chapters of Genesis aren’t easy ones. Beneath the surface thrust of the narrative — Jacob falling in love with Rachel, marrying her, and having a family (thus establishing the basis for the 12 tribes of Israel) — there is quite honestly a pretty sad mess. Favoritism, deception, infertility, desperation, rivalry…. You don’t need to read too carefully between the lines to sense both sisters’ pain. It’s always been a story I find pretty troubling.
This time though, perhaps because I’m reading it during advent, I’m thinking about the theme of waiting. In the Jacob/Rachel/Leah/Laban narrative of Genesis 29-30, there are different types of waiting. There’s excited, anticipatory waiting, like the willing waiting to marry the person you love. Genesis 29:20 says, “Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her.” That waiting was apparently easy. Or there’s the 9 months of waiting in a pregnancy, likely filled with joy for Rachel when she was pregnant at last. But there’s also the really hard and painful waiting of this story. Leah waiting for Jacob to notice her, to love her. Rachel trying and waiting and yearning to conceive a child. Jacob waiting, more than once and for years, to be free of his service to his father-in-law.
Sometimes the waiting of Advent flies by in the joyful eagerness of the season. And other times, the waiting of Advent is more a yearning, a longing, for God to finally set things right.
Author Gayle Boss captures these themes, and the feeling of waiting, in her lovely Advent book, All Creation Waits. For each day of Advent, she describes the wintering behavior of a particular animal. It’s oddly captivating, and peaceful. Below, I’ve included an excerpt from Day 1 of the Children’s Edition of the book, which includes lovely illustrations and shortened versions of her descriptions.
Advent 1: Painted Turtle
At the bottom of the pond / Painted Turtle has bruied herself. / Beneath the weight of frigid water / sealed with a layer of ice / and a skin of snow / she has stilled herself, made herself so slow / for six months she will not need to breathe.
If she stayed busy, not still / the cold would kill her. / Utterly quiet in her bed of mud / she will be safe — / if she waits. / Waiting is her one work / and it is not easy. / Sunk in deep stillness, she trusts / that one day her world will warm again / that she will breathe again / and swim free!