(The Nationalist, December 2004)
We’re not very good at waiting. Think of standing at a stop for a bus to come. Whether we wait patiently or impatiently, the bus will come in its own time. Or a similar situation at airports. Your flight is delayed by an hour, or is it two? We wait for someone who has made an appointment, and not kept it, or made contact. Are they coming? Such passive waiting does little for anyone.
We value time, we are pressed to get on with the job, to deliver the goods, to increase productivity. Waiting seems like a waste of valuable time, and sometimes it is.
Some of our unwillingness to wait comes from the illusion that we are, or ought to be, in control of our lives. Apart from birth in a particular family, country, language and culture, apart from illness and death, perhaps we are – to a degree. And the “apart from” covers a lot.
But there are other kinds of waiting, such as that of a pregnant woman who waits forty weeks for life to grow in her, or a farmer who waits for crops to mature, or a child waiting for adulthood. That waiting can’t be forced; it’s organic. It’s a different kind of waiting, and we can learn from it if we wish.
Active waiting is being present fully to the here and now, in the conviction that something is happening in it. Such “waiters” are present to this moment, believing that each moment is unique. They nurture the moment. This waiting is open-ended. It means waiting in hope, not in wishful thinking. It is being able to say, ‘I don’t know what this means, but I trust that good things will happen’. That is a radical stance toward life in a world preoccupied with control.
John the Baptist, a great prophet, once went through a crisis of faith. He asked Jesus, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or have we got to wait for someone else?’ In answer, Jesus pointed to his actions, saying in effect, ‘They answer your question. I’m doing the things God’s messenger is supposed to do’. At times we’re like John, wondering perhaps if faith has all been a mistake, that there really is nothing there after all, that prayer is just talking to ourselves, and God no more than a human invention. We may feel that Samuel Becket, in Waiting for Godot, had it right – God(ot) never came.
The counter-point to our waiting is God’s coming. God has come in Jesus at Bethlehem, is present in the community of faith and the sacraments, and will come in our death, and at the end of time.
We can pray: ‘In your mercy keep us free from sin and protect us from all anxiety as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Saviour, Jesus Christ’.