WAITING FOR GOD

Holy Saturday

I don’t like to wait. When I go to the grocery store, I’ll sometimes spend more time wandering the checkout lines to find the shortest one than I will picking out my groceries. I’ve left to highly-touted restaurants because there was a 15 minute wait—and spent half-an-hour finding someplace else to eat. I don’t like waiting—and will waste precious time to prove it!

But I’m not alone, nor is the phenomenon new. In Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, written in the 1830’s, the Frenchman observed that Americans are constantly in a rush, whether the goal is to get wealthy or simply finish their dinner: “With them it’s a matter of gobble, gulp and go,” he wrote. Our evolving techno-culture is based on getting our needs (or perceived needs) met immediately. So we have instant coffee, instant food (just add water), instant information via the internet—which also gives us instant and unprecedented access to the latest news and research on any topic two or three may gather around. De Tocqueville wouldn’t be a bit surprised.

But as important as our new instant world seems, it comes at a cost we don’t even know we’re paying. It may take a bit of living for us to realize what matters and what doesn’t (and a distressing number of us never make the discovery, regardless of the age chiseled on our tombstone when it’s all over). I sat for a day-and-a half with the wealthiest man I’ve ever known as he died—alone but for me—in his dark hospital room. He’d made his fortune and beat up on a lot of people along the way, who smiled and thanked him until his will was finalized and the doctors said it would all shortly be over. From that time, everybody left him. Sometimes we talked and sometimes we waited in silence. An hour or two before he died, he squeezed my hand and began to cry. “You know, Father, I’ve lived eighty-five years, and I’ve spent all these years running around doing things, making money, building my estate. Until yesterday I’ve never really just been quiet long enough to think about my life. I don’t have a single friend. Nobody loves me. I’m going to die alone.” While I’ll keep the conversation that followed private, what I’ve shared with you is tragedy enough. He never waited on God until the end—just in time to realize he’d misspent one of his most precious gifts—time.

Our life in Christ grows slowly. The Lord nurtures us over time through hardships and mercies, prayers and pains, joys and sorrows; sicknesses and health, fun and fear, terrors and imaginings, temptations, trials and tumults. There are times to act and times to wait—days of quiet and days of busyness. Both are necessary for our growth in Grace—God’s life in us.

Holy Saturday is a day of waiting—not bored, drumming your fingernails waiting, or excited, child-like waiting for Christmas morning—but the patient, quiet waiting of a farmer whose crops are slowly approaching harvest-time. Days of waiting are days given to us for “recollection,” for remembering and assessing. The Forty Days are freshly passed. How are you different than you were before they began? Is your prayer more focused? Do you know a bit more about how you sin and what you can do about it? Are you more willing to give up something of your own to benefit another person (not just money—will you give up, for someone else’s sake, what you want to do because it’s good for us not to always get what we want? Are you willing to do it ungrudgingly, with a smile so they don’t know what you’re doing?)? These are questions for today, while we wait for our Lord.

Patient, quiet waiting is prayer. Our hearts are turned to God and we put ourselves at His disposal.

I don’t like waiting because there’s at least a tacit, perhaps even unintended, message being given to the person who waits. “You can wait, because other things matter more than you or your time.” If you want to know just what I’m talking about, go stand in line to apply for a driver’s license. You’ll see just how important you are.

We need to learn how to wait on God. He DOES matter more than me and my time. He’s my Creator, I’m His creature. I can wait. And if I do, if I really wait, putting myself at His disposal, I discover how freeing it is not to be the Center of Everything. When I find out I don’t matter all that much, I also find out how much I do matter. I can quit being the Object Deserving of All Attention and become the recipient of His love.

Most wonderfully, when I learn to wait for God, I discover He’s been waiting for me the whole time. I haven’t been alone, I’ve just been too busy to notice.

Holy Saturday, today, wait for Him. At some point you’ll realize you’re waiting with Him.