Ways of Waiting
This last Sunday in worship we considered the witness of Anna and Simeon to waiting for the gift of God. And I am noticing that I have been focused on waiting for quite a while. This isn’t just an Advent thing, but something deeper in myself that is waiting for something. Not sure what that is at the moment, but the how of waiting is important to me personally in thie present moment.
In thinking about waiting there are a number of ways to wait that don’t work well.
The first way would be Anxious Waiting. At one level, we don’t think too much about saying that we are anxiously waiting for something to happen or someone to arrive. However, the core word is “anxiety.” This is a waiting that is colored with fear and doubt. We want to wait. We want the promise to be true. We want the awaited one to get here, but we aren’t sure. Our waiting is filled with Maybe. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I missed it somehow. Maybe God really didn’t mean it. The uncertainty becomes acidic to the spirit as time lengthens between the promise given and the answer’s arrival.
One direction to go when the waiting time lengthens is what I call Imitation Patience. This is the empty appearance of waiting when one has given up. We have always been told that patience is a virtue and so even when we have given up on the hope of the awaited promise we still think we need to put up the appearance of patience. Yet, it is a sham. We get to the end of each day, we look back and see the lack of transformation and we think, “Just as I thought … nothing … again … and forever.”
Another response to the lengthening waiting time (which for many of us in our age of the Instant can be measured in nano-seconds) is to give up on waiting at all: impatience wins. This, too, is a giving up on the promise ever coming, but then takes over the reins. The thought comes to us that God’s not going to give us what we want (or what we think God wanted to do with us in the first place) so that means that we need to take care of things ourselves. We try to sanctify the impatience by saying that we are just giving God a hand in fulfilling God’s promise, but we betray our giving up on the promise when we become very certain about what God is supposed to be doing in our lives.
We can and do choose those ways of waiting quite often. And as time marches on and we are unable to see God’s promise fulfilled in our lives and world they become greater temptations. However, we are offered another way of waiting. This way is what Anna and Simeon witness to in the Gospel story.
I call this way of waiting Holy Anticipation. This way of waiting is grounded in faith in the promise given. Well, actually, it is more deeply grounded in the One who promises. And maybe that is a clue to how this way of waiting can be time-proof. The promise is one thing, but if we keep our lives grounded on trusting the One of Grace and Love who gave the promise then we can be more open and flexible to the variable forms the fulfillment brings. So certainty in the Promisor is one key to Holy Anticipation.
The other key is openness to whatever God wants to do in answering the promise. We get stuck when we think too specifically about how the promise will be answered. How often do we miss the gift offered to us because it didn’t come in the form we expected. I heard a retreat leader once define Expectation as “preconceived resentment.” I can imagine Simeon and Anna spending their lives going to Temple looking at each person that arrives and each family that brings in their children to be blessed wondering if this one is the promised one. Is this the Hope of Israel? Can this next one be the Consolation of Your people?
We are invited to enter into each new day with that kind of Holy Anticipation. God, is this your promise? What gracious and glorious thing are doing through this person, this event, this act of mine, this gift of another, etc.? Holy Anticipation is a completely open heart that with certainty looks for how God is using each moment of each day for our good and God’s glory.
