I must write about waiting. The word has popped up several times in my reading over the past week.
Advent is about waiting, anticipation, and perhaps preparation.
A child waits (meaning anticipating gifts to come), but she does not wait with patience. Rather the patience is enforced. Leading some to give in. My wife had a tradition of opening one gift on Christmas Eve, not able to hold out 12 more hours.
Whenever I hear the word, I think of Samuel Beckett’s play, Waiting for Godot. Didi and Gogo engage in a number of discussions while waiting for Godot to arrive. He never does. The curtain falls while they are yet waiting. I suppose they are waiting yet today.
Some people are like Didi and Gogo. They wait for God to show up. In their minds God never shows. They are left in eternal waiting. Maybe they wait silently with inner pain. Maybe they are like Linus waiting for the Great Pumpkin and wait publicly only to suffer the derision of their peers.
My studies of the varieties of grace (one grace, many aspects) lead me to believe that often God is actually waiting for us. God laid out so many paths and hints and put so many experiences before us. Our job is to see and act.
That is spiritual formation. That is the reason for inculcating spiritual disciplines into our life continually.
It’s like a dance where the man and woman are at different tables, each waiting for the other to make the move, do something to reach out. In a 50s or 60s movie, some incident would happen, they’d make the connection, and everlasting romance would blossom.
God has made a move. The perceptive can see it. Perhaps we have it wrong. We aren’t supposed to wait. God is waiting. We are supposed to open our eyes to that and act.
[My link to the play goes to Wikipedia. That site is free to use, but there are many costs to maintaining it. Perhaps you could visit and leave some money there. I have donated for years. It is one of the best resources on the Web. Thank you.]
Faith Venture 
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