Waiting. Most of us can’t stand waiting. Waiting in the check-out line, waiting in traffic, waiting on-hold when trying to connect to a customer service rep, the list is endless. In what has to be one of it’s most ironic aspects, the very technical revolution that speeds our lives along has served to make us less tolerant of waiting than more: now, enduring the seconds it may require for a screen to change seems like a lifetime of hell, creating levels of frustration and hypertension we could never have imagined!
You may well take pity then on the plight of the early Christians. Since long before the Resurrection, Jesus had promised he would return to them. His disciples, including St. Paul and all those in the early Christian communities were expecting His return to be imminent. Picture those poor guys, pulling on their cloaks after having gotten out of bed in the morning, squinting up at the sky, waiting to catch a glimpse of Him. While they finally settled down, I’m sure it was with more than a little bit of puzzled disappointment and confusion.
Since then, the church fathers have tried to make expectant waiting a virtue rather than a source of frustration; the entire season of Advent, for example, is billed as a season of expectant waiting and hope. While this approach may work as a short-term, pre-Christmas strategy, it lacks the staying power to foster an effective sense of hope over the course of the full year. Something more is needed.
It is my belief, as proposed by St. Paul, that God is our Heavenly Father and loves us all the time, unconditionally, no matter who we are and what we do. This teaching contradicts conventional wisdom, both in Paul’s time and in our present day, and he got into a lot of trouble over it. His rationale, in a nutshell, was that Jesus’s death and resurrection heralded the start of a new covenant between God and mankind. There was no longer any need to consult the law; just go to your heart, feel God’s enormous love for you just as you are, and your heart will guide you to do what is loving and just. As we are all God’s children, if we go to our hearts, we will be drawn to treat God and each other in a loving, caring and compassionate fashion.
Paul’s New Covenant teachings, though not complicated to understand, prove to be extremely difficult to take in. For one thing, they fly in the face of everything we’ve ever learned from civic and religious authorities, both as children and adults. We also soon discover that giving over to God’s love means surrendering a very large part of our own will and ego: no mean feat. It requires a lot of willingness and practice, faith, trust and vulnerability to accomplish this leap. It is best considered a goal we work toward rather than a task we will ever fully accomplish.
So what has all this to do with waiting? When I was a boy growing up in Orange, NJ, the church steeple bells used to ring out each quarter-hour. This was, we were taught, so that we may pause wherever we were in the course of our day to say a brief prayer of thanks to God. While I don’t hear many church steeples going off regularly during the day any more, we still do have frequent, though irregular, opportunities to turn to God during the course of our day. That’s right, when we’re stuck waiting.
I love the sheer efficiency of taking something that is ordinarily an annoying waste of time and transforming it into an opportunity of growing closer to God. Taking in Paul’s concept of how much God loves us requires a great deal of practice and best way to approach this practice is through simple repetition. What wonderful growth opportunities our modern lifestyles provide!
Since, for many of us, our sense of our relationship with God began when we were children, familiar child-like imagery penetrates more readily and deeply into our subconscious. What often works well then is a kind of reverse Where’s Waldo? approach. Rather than searching a sea of faces to spot Waldo, imagine yourself as one of a sea of faces that God may see as He’s looking at all His children. In order to help Him pick us out of the crowd, we can say Here I am Father, and I’m feeling X (sad, happy, frightened or whatever we may be feeling at the moment).
First of all, I don’t think God has any trouble finding us. On the contrary, we’re much more likely to have trouble connecting to Him. So, while we’re mentally picturing a crowd, what we’re really doing is establishing who and where we are in the scene; so doing helps establish a clear and stable connection with God.
Secondly, its helpful to state, very briefly, how we’re feeling at the moment. This helps counteract a tendency many of us have internalized that we have to be in a certain way before we dare reach out to God. Ehhn! He wants to hear from us any time. Sure, perhaps it’s best to be in a state of grace at the moment we do, but, sometimes, when we’re stuck in traffic for example, our feelings may be going in a whole other direction. It’s important to envision that God wants to hear from us no matter what we may be feeling in the moment; He loves us just as we are. Frequently, becoming conscious that we’re in the process of making contact with God and the love He is always sending us, helps place us in that state of grace right then and there.
Lastly, if you have more than a moment on hand (rush hour), ask God to help with other intentions. Try to keep these statements brief and simple as that seems to help maintain a clear focus. When waking up in the night and praying while waiting for the Sandman, be sure to keep the conversation brief, loving, repetitive and positive; avoid falling into the habit of making that the time to review your many failings and shortcomings or you may find yourself in for a long, dark night! If you adopt these simple practices, I’m sure you’ll soon see beneficial changes in your life.