The Waiting
We live in a time of super-speed Internet and instant mashed potatoes, of Amazon Prime with two-day shipping and ordering pumpkin spice lattes on an app so you can avoid a line. No longer do I have to go with our family to Blockbuster to pick a movie, which took much negotiation and discussion. We can now click a remote and access almost any movie within minutes.
“Faster” appeals to me, as I imagine it does with most people in Western culture. Companies perceive our felt needs and provide services. We affirm their advertising in our consumption. We can scan a barcode on our phone to pay for goods and avoid having to wait for a woman to peruse her purse looking for her checkbook or look into the eyes of a cashier or the person bagging our groceries.
I wonder, though: when we exchange a slower pace of waiting for fast speed, what is the toll it takes on our souls, on our shared humanity, our relationship with God? My peppermint mocha is a drink I pick up so I can go faster without talking to anyone. But is this better for me or for the barista who may need a friendly greeting and smile?
I used to hate to wait. For me, it was a mix of fidgeting anxiety that grew in waiting and believing a narrative that waiting is a waste of time. It was not productive. I was not productive. It became a source of shame because I was not doing enough or making enough or cleaning enough. All are true by the world’s standards.
Perhaps we see waiting as an aggravation because it reminds us we are not in control. We embody many things, and one is limitations. We don’t have time to read everything so we listen to podcasts and audio books at a faster speed. I don’t see this as a solution, but as a symptom of a cultural narrative.
In her writing Gospel Medicine, Barbara Brown Taylor shares that “waiting isn’t nothing” because people are shaped in their waiting. I’ve begun to see waiting as a gift, an act of resistance, a spiritual discipline, a time of formation. Yes, even in the crowded lines at Walmart, I pay attention to those around me and ask God what He wants to reveal to me as I wait.
Four years ago in my class on the Pentateuch, I became convinced I needed to practice a weekly Sabbath. Thankfully, my husband joined me, as it’s hard to do alone. We’ve realized we are really bad at it. Maybe it takes years to unlearn the narrative we bought about doing more. On Friday, we eat before sundown and fast until Saturday at sundown-ish. We stumble through this time, not knowing what to do. At first it was pleasant, but the next morning we wondered, Now what? We adopt a time of rest, examine what is life-giving, pray together, take care of recycling, dig weeds in our yard. Since we live in west Texas, this is an ongoing activity. I am convinced 90% of what we grow are weeds. But I also tend the 10% of flowers and herbs. We have hung feeders to watch the birds. We read and take walks. Sabbath time, I am learning, is not a time of catching up (though we did this quite a bit). It’s not about adding things to our set apart time. Meister Eckhart said that God is not found in the addition of things, but by subtraction. This resonates with my experience of Sabbath and our tendency to fill it with a yes to Netflix, internet shopping, social media scrolling, and other anxiety-ridden activity. I can’t “Be still and know that I am God” when I don’t stop and respond to the ongoing invitation of Emmanuel: “Come, all you who are weary and hurting; I will give you rest.”
What I’ve learned about waiting is that I need to pause and ask myself, Do I want the immediate or the formative? The immediate isn’t always bad, but it’s not always best. When I pull back and seek the answer through prayer, I gain wisdom when I practice it. When I rush ahead, I can learn from that too, because it usually leads to a miscommunication or buying something I didn’t need.
But who doesn’t want more wisdom in this culture of hate and lies, of division and alibis, of aggressive othering and oppression?
I didn’t know waiting was a gift until I saw it as a catalyst for trust-making and a cruciform way of shaping people into the image of Christ. Jesus waited. He waited to start his ministry, he waited for “the time” to come, he waited for his disciples to understand his identity and mission. He waited as he refuted deceit in the wilderness where he was tempted to say yes to doing things his own way, to saying yes to ruling with imperial power. “You can have it all, Jesus, if you bow to me,” hissed the accuser and deceiver. Jesus waited and said no to hurrying on his way to the home of Jairus, whose only daughter was dying. He first had to find out who touched him in the crowd as he felt power go out of him and restore the dignity of “daughter” to a woman known for her ongoing bleeding. Jesus waited in prayer, and he prayed in the waiting. He waited in a garden, wanting a cup to pass. He waited through his suffering on a cross with arms stretched out wide.
When we wait, we unfurl our hands from their tight-fisted demands and curl our fingers around the hand of God. Imagine God putting seeds in our hands. What if, in our hunger, impatience, and the world that shouts “now,” that we devour what God wanted to grow in us, with us, for us, for the world to see? We would miss the life, beauty, goodness, joy that was to come for a short term gain.
In a world of rushing and crushing pace, waiting is a subversive act of faith where we say no to screaming immediacy. Waiting is not a waste of time. We are not deprived of opportunities when we abide with God. Spending time with Jesus, reading his teachings, wrestling in prayer, or mourning with tears as our only words provide us immunity from self-sufficiency, pride, and our self-indulgent timeline. We release our right-now striving. Doesn’t that sound like an inviting meal, even if it comes with a side dish of discomfort?
As we enter Advent, let us recall the waiting—from the people praying for God to return as promised, waiting for the birth, Anna and Simeon waiting to see the Messiah, our own waiting for Christ to come again as we live in the now and not yet.
