I’m not very good at waiting.
Which is a shame, since so much of life is about waiting, about how we go about waiting.
Waiting in line. Waiting for the day to end, to hear back word about a new job, a test result, about an appointment.
Waiting for someone to come home.
Waiting to be attacked, or waiting to strike, for prey, on the hunt.
Waiting to die.
Waiting for birth, for the contractions to start.
Waiting for something that never arrives.
Waiting for the sermon to end.
Sometimes I feel like I’m waiting for something but I don’t know what it is, maybe I forgot, maybe it is foresight, or just mild paranoia.
How do we go about waiting? Checking the time over and over, tapping our fingers, fidgeting, or poised ready to move, like a runner at the starting line, or deep silence and watchful attentiveness?
Forty days after Easter is the Ascension, Christ ascends to the right hand of the Father, completing his life with us.
The message, Jesus final words,
-to wait for the Spirit,
-to be clothed with power from on high, -to be witnesses of his life who share that witness both near and far,
-to share in the life of God
-to pass it along just like Jesus shared that life with us so we share it with those who are near and those who are faraway.
Jesus ascends and he tells his followers to wait.
If this witness, this testimony about Jesus is so important then why wait?
How important is the message, the Gospel, how important is belief in Christ?
Is it a curiosity to be discussed as pleasant conversation or thoughtful dialogue?
Or is it life itself before it is too late? Is it a matter of urgency? Why wait?
If someone were about to be run over by a train, would I talk with them about it or would I yank them out of the way whether they wanted to or not?
If the Gospel isn’t life itself then is it Gospel? Why wait?
There are certain kinds of trains that we can’t pull people away from, we can only love them away.
We can’t yank people into belief no matter how desperate the need, we can only love them into belief, the kind of belief that saves, the kind of belief that changes a life, the kind of belief that spreads love.
We wait, because love is patient and kind, it hopes all things and endures all things, love abides, love waits and stays put and is the kind of company that makes God present where God has been forgotten or forsaken.
Drive by evangelism is a cruel lie; love in a hurry is a heresy.
Wait.
Wait for the Spirit, to be clothed with a different kind of power, the power to abide, the power to wait, the power to love and endure, the power that saves.
Belief is everything. Belief saves lives. Belief is urgent. Belief is a desperate peacefulness, an urgent patience, a fevered endurance, an abiding hurry. Belief is a certain kind of waiting. Hurry up and wait.