A Word from Pastor Lisa: Waiting on the World to Change

Me and all my friends
We're all misunderstood
They say we stand for nothing and
There's no way we ever could
Now we see everything that's going wrong
With the world and those who lead it
We just feel like we don't have the means
To rise above and beat it
So we keep waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change
We keep on waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change
--John Mayer, “Waiting on the World to Change”


In our household, we take sports very seriously. My husband’s best friend from work was our matchmaker. Before he set us up on our first date, the primary question he asked me was, “How big of an IU fan are you?” I said I was a solid supporter, but I had no idea at the time I was being introduced to a mega-fan.


When my husband and I got married, I was shocked by the amount of sports paraphernalia he brought into the home – baseball cards, figurines, posters, artwork, Wheaties boxes, T-shirts, ticket stubs, and an entire Christmas tree worth of Hallmark sports ornaments. When we finally put up the sports tree, I was appalled to discover that not a single ornament featured a female athlete. What kind of example was this for our daughter? I tweeted my outrage at Hallmark and waited for a reply. In the meantime, I designed a Shutterfly ornament that featured pictures of our daughter with her favorite IU women’s basketball players. We gave it to her daddy that Christmas, and they were the only women on our sports tree.


Fast forward to this week. While I was scrolling through social media, I was delighted to find a Hallmark advertisement for a Christmas ornament featuring star soccer athlete Julie Ertz. (Don’t worry, Grandma has already purchased it!) My heart rejoiced. Finally, after years of only male athletes, we would have a Hallmark sports ornament of a woman on our tree! While I’m not sure Hallmark ever saw my Tweet, I felt heard, recognized, and represented.


I also reflected on how this journey with Hallmark mirrors our experience in Advent, which begins this Sunday. This is a season of preparation for the birth of Jesus. We do this through prayer, worship, song, study, and anticipating his return. This is also a season of waiting. We live in the between-times, where we give thanks for the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, but we also know that the world will not be fully restored until he comes back. That doesn’t mean we sit idly by, waiting on the world to change.

God calls us to be the change as we serve each other, give to those in need, work for justice, and offer peace and hope to those who need it most. It’s easy to criticize Hallmark on social media, then sit back and do nothing. It’s a lot harder to make my daughter feel recognized and included as a woman who loves sports, even when the world around her isn’t changing fast enough. It’s even harder still to advocate for all women in all fields to get the equal recognition they deserve. Advent calls us to do both. It acknowledges that often times as followers of Jesus, we’re waiting on the world to change. But we don’t do that passively. We do that as co-creators with Christ, helping to usher in aspects of his new world, slowly but surely, in hopes that true change will come.

Mariah Gese