Waiting

Waiting.

I have often thought that the most difficult of all spiritual exercises is waiting.

In the Hebrew Scripture reading for Easter Day, Isaiah 25:6-9, we read:

“…Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him so that he might save us” (Isaiah 25:9).

In the Book of Acts, we read this about the risen Christ, before he ascends to heaven:

“While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father” (Acts 1:4).

And we are certainly living through days of waiting. Some of this waiting is collective: Who will be elected President of the United States this November? When and how will the war in Gaza end? What will become of the earth’s environment? Some of this waiting is personal: When will my life start going the way I want it to? When will my estranged friend and I reconcile? When will I know my test results? Whom can I trust?

Waiting is a most difficult spiritual exercise. This week is all about waiting. We have waited almost six weeks, since the beginning of the season of Lent, to celebrate the joy of Easter. But now we must walk the journey of Jesus’ rejection and abandonment. We must hear again the story of his betrayal by one of his own, hand-picked disciples. We must gird ourselves to read about the injustice of his trial, the violence of his execution, the agony of his death.

We want to hurry past this week. We want to go straight to the egg hunt, the Hallelujah Chorus, the Good News of the risen Christ. Just as we want to hurry past all our other waitings. But much of life does not bend to our wills. If we trust, we can find wisdom in waiting. We can find strength. And we can find that, even if that for which we wait is maddeningly elusive, life IS happening here and now.

I have recently resumed a prayer exercise that requires patience, waiting. First, one sits (or kneels) in a stable way and simply listens to one’s breathing — not trying to control it, but just to listen. Then one lets Christ’s light enter, beginning at the crown of the head and moving steadily down to the feet. Here, the challenge is simply to listen to what is going on in one’s body — where it is tense or painful, where it is relaxed or comfortable. One listens to these bodily states as if one stands a step removed. Then, with body and breathing settled, and the mind detached from simply reacting, reacting, reacting, one takes up a Scripture verse, preferably a short one such as, “The Lord is my shepherd…”.

In this prayer, after this preparation, one simply waits.

“Wait on the Lord” (Psalm 27:14).

May your Holy Week be a blessed exercise in waiting.

In Christ,

Lee