Waiting has never been my strong suit. I tend to be impatient and want to get on with things. I like doing rather than waiting. Yet so much of life is waiting. Nancy on the other hand seems so calm about waiting. Almost resigned to it. And often she has a book (or three), or a knitting project, or something else that occupies her in the fallow times.
I recall talking with my grandmother when I was a teen and complaining how I had to wait for everything. She told me that she did not like waiting either – but going to and from work by bus she frequently had to wait. An standing peering down the street to get a glimpse of the errant bus did not make the waiting easier. Then, she said, she began to bring a book with her. And she would stand and read at the bus stop. “The bus takes the same amount of time, but the wait seems shorter. You can’t control waiting but you can control what you will do while you are waiting.”
We celebrate waiting in this season of Advent. Waiting for the fulfillment of God’s purpose for us and for the world. Waiting for the celebration of Jesus’ birth. Waiting for the future to reveal itself in various ways in our individual lives.
Waiting is inevitable. The question we have to answer for ourselves is how shall we choose to wait?
Don
