Waiting is hard. It takes a certain strength of character to wait, and there are many time that I’ve failed show patience and I know the sting of rushing too fast. Even the word itself, patient, comes from latin and greek words that means ‘one who suffers’ or ‘I am suffering.’ So if you are a medical ‘patient’ waiting ‘patiently’ for care or relief from pain, you are suffering.
Since life is so short and there is much to do, it feels like a shame to allow ourselves to wait or to live patiently. We want to rush ahead and accomplish our goals. Leaving others in the dust seems like the cost of doing business. Yet we know that often the best things in life, those things that make our short lives worth living, are the things worth waiting for. Some things might be worth waiting for, and some people are worth waiting for.
Advent is that season leading up until Christmas where we reflect on what it means to be patient, or to suffer, as we wait. In our home, we have Kinder Surprise Advent calendar on our kitchen counter and every morning our three-year old opens a little cardboard door and pulls out a small chocolate. The ongoing daily routine of opening a door feels a bit painful because, right there in the middle, is one big door. She really wants to open the big door because she knows that there is a big surprise hidden inside. But every day is a patient countdown until Christmas, until the Big Day.
My wife and I are expecting a baby, and so are a number of other families in our church community. Two mothers are due right around Christmas and the sense of hopeful waiting is even more meaningful for them. With sore backs and a definite readiness to be done with the pregnancy is a reminder that after the waiting, after all the patience, the story takes a turn. Very soon we will all be holding a new baby and we will all be a part of the celebration. It is fitting that the season of Advent, and the very story of Christmas, is centred around a pregnancy – and a longing – for something long awaited.
Becoming patient people means that we anticipate and lean-into our time of waiting. Impatience is the opposite. Impatient people run away from waiting, they do not anticipate that anything good will come of it. They believe that real goodness is found somewhere else, with someone else, and in other ways. Henri Nouwen says that for impatient people, “the moment is empty.” But patient people wait right where they are, watching, hoping, and anticipating that the morning will come.
Today you might feel like a patient, patient. A waiting, suffering person. You might feel like the bleak midwinter has set in and that the warmth of daylight and the fresh spring air is just too far off. December 21st, the shortest day of the year, is almost upon us and if there is any day that represents waiting, it is this dark day – a day with about eight fewer hours of daylight than in June.
But remember: the moment is not empty. Everywhere you go, be it your home, neighbourhood, or office, you can believe that something good is at work. God is not scandalized by patience, in fact, God may be found right in the midst of it.
