Waiting is a holy thing.
Which is not how I normally experience it.
Waiting is a lot of things, but holy isn’t the word I would use to describe it.
Waiting is holy.
So much of life is waiting.
I was thinking about that the other night when I was caught behind someone who was very slow at the check-out line at the grocery store. Turns out it was a parishioner. I am sworn to secrecy.
Usually I’m the one who is slow at the check out line, I like my bags packed in a certain way.
Hurry up and wait.
What do we do with that inconvenient holy time?
Waiting for a child to be born?
Waiting by the hospital bed of someone we love?
Waiting for a job?
Waiting for love?
Waiting for healing?
Waiting for death?
Just waiting for nothing in particular?
Waiting for freedom? For Justice?
John the Baptist was in prison waiting for an uncertain future, sending a message to Jesus, is he the one they are waiting for? The one who brings the liberation of the kingdom of heaven.
The letter of James tells us to wait like a farmer waiting for the precious crop, patiently waiting for the early and late rains, the patient endurance of the prophets being our example.
Waiting for the rain. Waiting for God. Waiting for the arrival, the Advent of what is to come.
Waiting patiently for the Lord.
Waiting is hard largely because it means that someone else is in control, being at their mercy, their whim and fancy. I am impatient because I don’t like someone else controlling my life.
Advent is when we learn about holy things.
Like waiting in line at the Grocery store.
What do we do with all this waiting? All this inconvenient holiness that slows us down like molasses everywhere we turn? Gumming the works.
Waiting for what will be but isn’t yet.
It is important to have that vision of God’s Kingdom always before us that Jesus announces, healing the blind, the lame, the lepers, the deaf, the dead, the poor, the prisoners, a vision of how things should be, a vision of a whole world, an unbroken creation.
Something worth waiting for. It is a vision that changes how we wait, it changes our expectations in how we live.
A vision of God embracing the world rather than abandoning or rejecting or destroying, a vision different from how we so often live our own lives. A vision of God waiting for us to grow, like a precious crop.
Waiting, like John the Baptist in prison, waiting for freedom.
Waiting is a holy thing. Slow as molasses.
What do we do with all this inconvenient holiness slowing us down everywhere we turn?
Wait and see.