Waiting

This past Saturday, I participated in the Spiritual Direction portion of the Center for Spiritual Nourishment offerings at our church. The session was led by Carol Abbott, who is a certified Spiritual Director and a member of the congregation. Carol led us to reflect on the practice of waiting. For those of us who may not know, waiting is itself an important spiritual practice.

Some time back, I learned about this practice of waiting in silence myself. And because of this practice's inherent value, I introduced it into our worship. I didn’t call it waiting. I would rather invite us to meditative silence, which is also a form of waiting. Over the years, I have noticed that many people are not comfortable with the practice, so they fidget. "Why are we meditating in silence?" I am sure they ask themselves.

I can understand why some of us may not be all that comfortable with the practice. Not because they object to it, but because we are all used to being busy, doing something, and we hate sitting and doing nothing. We don’t necessarily consider waiting unproductive, but we hate not being busy doing something. For some of us, doing something translates to accomplishment. And so, we cannot simply sit and do nothing. We always have to do something because we want to feel accomplished.

But the truth of the matter is that within worship, you hear others speak, read, and sing to you; you hear yourself speak and sing. You hear the holy noise of children. What seems to be missing is that we don’t provide God with the opportunity to speak to us. It is not the case that God doesn’t speak to us through the liturgy of word and sacrament - God does. But God also comes to us and speaks to us in the still, small voice, often while we wait in silence.

There are different times when we are invited to wait. Advent is one of those times. Advent is about waiting. We wait for the birth of the God who comes to us in human form as a baby. Our anticipatory wait is crowned with a joyous celebration of the birth of the Christ Child at Christmas. The beauty of Advent’s wait is that we know what we are waiting for.

Remember the night in the Garden of Gethsemane? Jesus was deeply troubled as he went to pray. He then asked his disciples to stay awake with him - to, essentially, wait. But when Jesus returned, he found them sleeping. He woke them up and invited them to keep watch, pray, and wait. But they fell asleep again. This happened three times. Jesus’s friends simply couldn’t wait. And it wasn’t because they didn’t know what they were waiting for; their eyes were simply heavy with sleep, and so they simply couldn’t help themselves. 

Think about being at a restaurant. The person who is to attend to you is your waitress or waiter, as they are supposed to wait on you. Waiting on you simply means that they are available to respond to any request that you may have. For that reason, they will appear every once in a while to check on you, bring you your menu, tell you about the specials of the day, ask which beverage you want, and when you are ready, they take the order for your appetizers, entrée, and dessert - if you have the stomach for all that. The point here is that you have people waiting on you to attend to your needs.

In just the same way that we wait during Advent, we also wait during pregnancy. It is a long wait, but always worth it because our bundle of joy makes it all worthwhile. A couple of weeks ago, I visited a parishioner who had recently given birth. The sweet, baby boy slept through my visit, but I did notice the joy and relief of the mother, father, and grandmother that comes with finally seeing the life that had been slowly growing in a womb. Pregnancy is about waiting.

And so, we wait. 

In much the same way that we wait for the birth of a child, we sometimes wait for the passing of a loved one. I have had the privilege of being in several situations where a family waits for the passing of a loved one. It is a holy wait. In those situations, we are often more accepting of the transition because we have resigned ourselves to the fact that nothing can be done to give our beloved a new lease of life. There are also times when death offers a sense of relief, especially when the beloved is suffering. And so, however difficult or heart-wrenching our waiting may be, we wait.

I once heard someone capture waiting in this way:

There is an until waiting for you.

You will be misunderstood until you are not.

You will be outside until you are inside.

You will be suspect until you are celebrated.

You will be rejected until you are accepted.

You will be underestimated until you are unstoppable.

In whatever situation you find yourself, emerging victorious on the other side takes waiting.

In the season of Lent, we also wait. We wait till the night when Jesus invites us to the Garden of Gethsemane. It is just the same as the Garden of Eden. But the outcome of these two gardens is different: in the Garden of Eden, we couldn't wait to express our human desires; in the Garden of Gethsemane, we wait because we can control those same human desires. If in the Garden of Eden, we couldn’t wait to eat the apple because of our desire to be like God. In the Garden of Gethsemane, we keep watch, pray, and wait to see what God can do with us.

And until God accomplishes God’s task with us. Until we experience the resurrection, we wait, we wait, and we wait.

In meditative silence and prayer, let’s keep waiting… 

Manny+