Waiting for the Lord!

"But those who wait for the Lord, shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint." (Isaiah 40:31)

I cannot read this passage without picturing in my mind's eye an incident that happened to me one day over ten years ago.  I was walking in Kincaid Park, a large city park in west Anchorage that overlooks the Cook Inlet.  I was on a trail that follows the ridge down from the highest point in the park all the way down to the shoreline of the inlet.  Suddenly four bald eagles came flying up the ridge not 50 feet over my head - flying in formation.  I stopped and watched those magnificent birds, and it was as if they were putting on a flying show just for me.  They flew to the top of the ridge, soared upward, then turned and flew down the ridge, in formation, just over my head at a tremendous speed.  And then a few minutes later they repeated the flying show all over again.  

"But those who wait for the Lord, shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles..."

“Wait!”  Don’t you just hate that word "wait" sometimes?  In our fast paced society full of fast-food-restaurants, drive through ATM’s, high speed internet connections, text messaging – any more even instant pudding can seem slow! 

This week I was reading some essays on a journalism website, a website where you can submit essays for competition, and I ran across several articles on the Art of Waiting.  One article by a woman named Angel began this way:

“I remember a time when my best friend and I agreed to meet at this one fast food restaurant, and from there we were going to do our scheduled errands. We agreed to meet at 10am.   And yes, I was there, exactly at 10am, but she wasn't.  I waited until 10:05am, and when I realized that I'd been waiting for 5 whole minutes, I left.

You see, I never mastered the art of waiting.   I thought that waiting was just a waste of time and energy. Why wait when you can do something better…  Yes, I was impulsive. I wanted a fast paced life. I believed that waiting was being stagnant.”

The simple truth is that life involves a lot of waiting.  There are over six billion people on the planet and the lines aren’t getting any shorter.  Waiting, for most of us, is a dreaded experience.

Most people consider waiting to be a kind of wasteland experience: waiting in traffic; waiting in line at the grocery store; waiting at the doctor’s office; waiting to be seated at the restaurant (or more serious things); waiting for the test results; waiting to get married; waiting for the sick child to get better; waiting for the conflict to be resolved;  waiting for the darkness of grief to give way to the light of a new day; waiting for this, waiting for that - waiting, waiting, waiting!  

And what makes it worse is that we live in a culture that says "Get going! Do something!  Don't just sit there! Be in control!"  I will dare to say that most of us experience waiting as a kind of wilderness between where we currently are and where we desire to be - an in-between wasteland.  When we find ourselves in it, we want very much to get through it and be done with it - sometimes to the point of agitation, aggressive behavior, even hostility; and if it lasts too long - depression!

But in the face of all of this about waiting, Isaiah comes along and says, "But those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint."

These words were first written to a people in the midst of a profound experience of waiting.  It was sometime after 587 BC, after the Babylonians attacked and destroyed Jerusalem and reduced the great temple to rubble, deporting many of the inhabitants to Babylon.   The nation was destroyed and their religious and spiritual identity was in jeopardy. It was a difficult and dark time.  Several prophets emerged in this desperate time including Ezekiel, Jeremiah and 2 Isaiah, and they were preaching and injecting messages of hope into the despair of the nation; proclaiming that a day was coming when the people would be restored to their land, their temple rebuilt, and the nation renewed.  But meanwhile they waited, for decades they waited – and times were difficult. 

I believe Isaiah was saying that there is something really important for us to know about waiting. There is perhaps even something redemptive that can happen in the experience of waiting.  I very much get the sense that Isaiah knew something that most of us don't know!   What could it be?

Perhaps the most profound experiences of waiting are those times when we perceive we are waiting on God. Think of a desert time in your life when it felt like you were waiting on God?  Maybe an extended period of illness or a time of trouble, and it just seemed to go on and on and never come to an end; resolution never came - so you waited in a wasteland of waiting!

As you sat mired in waiting's wasteland, you experienced a range of emotions including anger, anxiety, frustration, anticipation, worry, resignation, and more.  If the waiting was too long and too unbearable, you may have found yourself crying, shouting and screaming, "How long, O Lord? How long?"  It is one of the most frequently spoken laments of the Psalms.  Two years ago I had a huge spine surgery.  For seven weeks following I suffered severe pain;  bone and muscle in rebellion from being invaded upon by the surgeon's knife.  Sickness and anxiety attacks from the narcotic pain drugs.  Many days I wept, and I cried to God, "How long, O Lord, How long?"

I have ministered to many people who have dwelt in the wasteland of waiting in extraordinary ways; people of whom it is fair to say were waiting on God in the deepest sense we could ever mean it!

But what does it mean, to wait on God?  To be honest, I don't know for sure, but I do sense that waiting on God means waiting in a substantially different way than we normally wait. I suspect the truth that lies behind this verse is so profound it might take a life-time to even begin to understand the wonder of its mystery. But I will share with you what I do have - TWO THINGS - a place to begin!

FIRST, I normally wait impatiently, and I suspect that I am not alone in that!   I believe patience means the willingness to stay where I am and live the situation out to the fullest, trusting that something hidden will reveal itself and perhaps even surprise me. Impatient people live with the expectation that the authentic thing is going to happen somewhere else; real life is going to happen somewhere else, and therefore I want to go to that somewhere else. I want to be in that somewhere else.  My mind and heart is already in that somewhere else.  I fight and resist being in the present.  I don't expect there to be any quality of life in the present, so much so, I perceive the present moment to be empty and void - a wilderness to escape.  But PATIENT PEOPLE dare to stay where they are. PATIENT LIVING means to live actively in the present and wait there. Waiting for the patient person is active waiting - it is not passive waiting.

Some years ago I had the privilege of knowing a most remarkable woman. Barb was dying of ovarian cancer. Instead of waiting passively in despair for death, she waited actively. She cherished every moment of the balance of her life. In the final months, weeks and days of her life, her family shared with each other in the deepest of ways, appreciating the gift of life, and the gift of each other. They expressed their love for one another and left nothing unspoken.
           When Barb died, it was hard. Where there is great love, there is great grief.  But yet, because she and her family waited actively and shared the depths of their love for each other, they expressed that they experienced God's presence in profound ways - and it even empowered them in their grieving experience afterwards.  In their wilderness of waiting, springs of living water burst forth.  In those final days, Barb's life and that of her family took on the wings of an eagle - and through them God touched so many of us - even transformed us.

Waiting actively is being fully present in the moment, living with the conviction that something can really happen right where you are, even if you don't want to be there; even if it is difficult to be there; making yourself available to that God-presence!   The early followers of Jesus experienced God's presence even in the worst of wastelands.   They testified to God's presence even in experience of Jesus' death on the cross.  They declared that no place, circumstance or situation is devoid of God's transforming presence.    

The SECOND THING is that waiting needs to be open-ended.  Open-ended waiting is very hard for us because we want something concrete, something specific, a desired goal.  Most of our waiting is filled with wishes: "I wish I would get the job."  "I wish the pain would go away." "I wish I would get well."  I wish! I wish! I wish!" We are full of wishes and our waiting gets all tangled up and intertwined with our wishes. So, our waiting is not open-ended.  Instead, our waiting becomes an attempt to control the future. We want our future to go in a very specific direction, and if it does not go that direction we are very disappointed, angry; filled with grief, and disillusioned.

One of the things I am learning about waiting is to begin to let go of my of my agenda; let go of my lists of wishes and specifics; let go of my need for ultimate control. Waiting open-endedly is an enormously radical attitude toward life.  By letting go of my specific wishes, I am trusting that something will happen that is beyond my own imaginings.  By letting lose my grip on the specific, I open myself up to new possibilities for God to work in my life; to surprise me with new things.

Right now we are corporately experiencing unsure times.  Almost all of us in one way or another are affected by worsening economic times.  No one can really predict what things will be like in three months, six months or a year.  But we do have choices.  We can just sit around passively waiting for things to get better, feeling sorry ourselves, watching our 401k’s deplete, longing for the "good ole days", hoping they will return soon. 
     Or we can wait more actively.  I don't have easy answers about what active waiting might be like, but I suspect it might have to do with turning our lives inside-out, turning towards our neighbors and serving those who might have even greater needs than our own and working to empower them.  It might mean simplifying our lives, looking to simpler things for happiness and fulfillment; reprioritizing what's really important; looking toward family, friends and loved ones as a source of joy rather than self-indulgence.   

Great portions of our lives are spent waiting. In fact, I have to wonder if in some ways we wait more than we do not.  The spiritual life is largely a life of waiting where waiting becomes a spiritual discipline - in which we wait actively, fully present in the moment, letting go of rigid expectations, trusting that new things can happen to us, that God's presence will bring surprises beyond our imagining or prediction. That, my friends, is indeed a radical stance toward life in a world that has much to learn about waiting.