On Waiting

The below is an excerpt from an email written for the congregation where I am one of the pastors.

How good are you at waiting?

Are you the kind of person who drums your fingers on the steering wheel as you sit in your car at yet another red light? If only the car in front had been going a little bit faster, you both could have made it through the junction. Instead, you have to add another 45 seconds to your journey time.

Or do you calculate which queue at the supermarket checkouts is going to move fastest, based not only on how many items people have in their baskets and trolleys, but on your perception of how quickly they’re going to pack and pay, and whether or not the cashier is likely to engage anyone in conversation longer than brief pleasantries? Oh, just me then?

Waiting.

It doesn’t come easy to some of us. But that’s the situation we find ourselves in at the moment. We weren’t sure how long we were going to have to be doing this, but it now looks like it could be even longer than we were expecting.

Waiting.

I’ve been struck how Jesus said on two occasions, ‘My time has not yet come’ (John 2:4 and 7:8). Jesus himself was in a time of waiting, yet continued to carry out the work the Father had given him to do. In the church calendar, this period between Easter and Pentecost is a time of waiting... waiting for what God will do next.

There’s something about waiting which characterises the Christian life.

All of us are waiting in hope for what God has yet to do for us and for this planet – when Jesus comes again, when the dead will be raised, when we’ll be given new bodies, when there’ll be a new heaven and a new earth. Whatever else we might be waiting for meanwhile, we’re all waiting for that.

We wait for this kind of future not in a passive waiting-room sense but in an active living out of an alternative vision of what really matters here and now. Christian hope is not about sitting back and waiting for something better to come along, but a confidence which allows us endure and be patient and resilient in the face of setbacks. If we’re going to have to wait at the moment, let’s wait like that.