A Time to Wait

Athirst is my soul for the living God. 
When shall I go and behold the face of God?

I spend a lot of time waiting. Usually it involves waiting in a carpool lane, for a lesson to be over, or for everyone to finally make it home. I think waiting gets a bad rap. In fact, over the years I've found it can be a very productive time. In times of waiting I have read hundreds of pages, scribbled notes for work, finished craft projects, and caught up on the news. The lesson is that waiting is what you make of it.

Let's face it, a great deal of life is spent waiting. We wait with anticipation for the celebrations and with dread for the inevitable sorrows. We wait for the mundane and the magnificent. We anxiously await the beginnings and impatiently wait for the ends. We wait, and we wait, and we wait.

Lent is sometimes called a time of waiting. We look toward Easter and are reminded once again of our wait for eternal life. But it most certainly is not a wasted time.

We are now halfway through our Lenten journey. If we use the metaphor of going out into the desert, we find ourselves squarely in the middle of it. It's time to turn around and start the long walk back. We haven't been sitting in one place, we have spent these days walking, searching, thinking, and praying.

Take a moment to reflect on your waiting time. In these last weeks, how you have changed? What have you experienced? What have you discovered? What still lies ahead?

Psalm 42
As the deer longs for streams of water,
so my soul longs for you, O God.
My being thirsts for God, the living God.
When can I go and see the face of God? 

A waiting person is a patient person. The word "patience" implies the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us. Patient living means to live actively in the present and wait there. Impatient people expect the real thing to happen somewhere else, and therefore they want to get away from the present situation and go elsewhere. For them the moment is emptly. But patient people dare to stay where they are. Waiting, then is not passive. It involves nurturing and the growth of something growing within. 

~Finding My Way Home by Henri Nouwen

Athirst is my soul for the living God.
When shall I go and behold the face of God?