Waiting

We have now entered the season of Advent, the time of waiting before Christmas. It’s an important time to remember that we are waiting for the completion of what Jesus has started and is doing in the world, whilst also remembering that initial waiting for the coming of the Messiah. This is not a passive waiting but a hopeful waiting, and an active waiting. I was challenge by this thought from Henri Nouwen recently, (it also seems appropriate as the Advent period also contains my birthday):

The Challenge of Aging
Waiting patiently in expectation does not necessarily get easier as we become older. On the contrary, as we grow in age we are tempted to settle down in a routine way of living and say: “Well, I have seen it all. … There is nothing new under the sun. … I am just going to take it easy and take the days as they come.” But in this way our lives lose their creative tension. We no longer expect something really new to happen. We become cynical or self-satisfied or simply bored.
The challenge of aging is waiting with an ever-greater patience and an ever- stronger expectation. It is living with an eager hope. It is trusting that through Christ “we have been admitted into God’s favour … and look forward exultantly to God’s glory” (Romans 5:2).

Prayer
The following is a liturgy I put together a few years back. It’s not my own words but a reflection of Henri Nouwen mixed with Psalm 130.
Waiting for God

  • v1: Waiting is not a very popular attitude.
  • v2: Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD;
  • v1: Waiting is not something that people think about with great sympathy.
  • v2: O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy.
  • v1: In fact, most people consider waiting a waste of time.
  • v2: Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD;
  • v1: Perhaps this is because the culture in which we live is basically saying, “Get going! Do something! Show you are able to make a difference! Don’t just sit there and wait!”
  • v2: O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy.
  • v1: For many people, waiting is an awful desert between where they are and where they want to go. And people do not like such a place. They want to get out of it by doing something.
  • v2:  I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.
  • v1: But there is none of this passivity in scripture. Those who are waiting are waiting very actively
  • v2:  I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.
  • v1: They know that what they are waiting for is growing from the ground on which they are standing. That’s the secret. The secret of waiting is the faith that the seed [the promise] has been planted, that something has begun.
  • v2: My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning…
  • v1: Active waiting means to be present fully to the moment, in the conviction that something is happening where you are and that you want to be present to it. A waiting person is someone who is present to the moment, who believes that this moment is the moment.
  • v2:  I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning…
  • v1: … But Zechariah, Elizabeth, and Mary were not filled with wishes. They were filled with hope. Hope is something very different. Hope is trusting that something will be fulfilled, but fulfilled according to the promises and not just according to our wishes. Therefore, hope is always open-ended.
  • v2:  I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning…
  • v1: I have found it very important in my own life to let go of my wishes and start hoping. It was only when I was willing to let go of wishes that something really new, something beyond my own expectations could happen to me. Just imagine what Mary was actually saying in the words, “I am the handmaid of the Lord…let what you have said be done to me” (Luke 1:38, JB). She was saying, “I don’t know what this all means, but I trust that good things will happen.” She trusted so deeply that her waiting was open to all possibilities. And she did not want to control them. She believed that when she listened carefully, she could trust what was going to happen.

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