“How time flies”
as the old saying goes. It doesn't seem
long since Advent when we were waiting expectantly to celebrate the birth of
Christ – the incarnation, and here we are already in Lent, called to a time of
waiting again, this time going towards Easter and to celebrate the his
Resurrection.
Waiting seems to become ever more
counter-cultural, everything conspiring against it. I shiver as I see the spring fashions
displayed in shop windows in January!
Waiting
causes us more than ever to be impatient, yet patience is supposedly a
virtue. So how do we, how can we regard 'waiting'. How can we make sense of it. What can we do as we wait? How can we be as we wait? What about the saying 'to kill time' – surely
that must be a dubious activity.
Well the Psalms are full of injunctions
to wait. It would seem that waiting is a
crucial spiritual discipline. Indeed
some things simply cannot be speeded up – such as the nine months it takes for
a baby to fully form in the womb. This
is a powerful symbol of how waiting time, appropriate time, Kairos as opposed
to Chronos or clock time is an important element in life.
This inspires me to think of waiting as
useful in terms of attentive preparation.
Most good things in life require careful preparation, be it a good meal,
a good celebration, a good exam result or a good decision being taken. Perhaps even waiting in the supermarket queue
could, with a little imagination, be seen in this light!
Above all experience tells me that
waiting is an opportunity to be attentive to myself and to God, to listen and
reflect – rather like prayer in fact.
On my journey through many different life
experiences Psalm 25 has became one of my favourite Biblical texts to read, as
it really gets me into asking for divine guidance through trials and
tribulations, and through the more ordinary ups, downs, and sometimes sideways
moves through life. To keep on track I
need to keep re-reading it!
Janet Sayers
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