God, the God of Israel, is not a God that we can force to conform to our purposes. For as Isaiah makes clear, we have been created to conform to God's purposes. This, moreover, is extremely good news because it means that the world as we know it is not without purpose. It can only appear without purpose if we persist in viewing and acting in the world as if God does not exist.
The question, therefore, is not does God exist, but do we. For whatever it means for us to exist, we do so as creatures created, as the universe has been created, to glorify God.
So it matters what sort of persons we are to be if we are to be a people who know how to wait. This is Advent. This is the time of a hastening that waits.
—- Stanley Hauerwas
