Greetings,
Much of our lives is spent waiting. We might wait for the bus. We wait for each other. We wait in line at the post office. We wait for our food at a restaurant. Sometimes we wait for phones calls or for an important letter. Waiting can be trying, and we do not always like to wait. But what if waiting is precisely the time that we find meaning? R.S. Thomas in his poem "Kneeling" ends his poem with the line, "The meaning is in the waiting." Of course, Thomas is referring to waiting on God and that may be something we all have to do. Waiting on God to act, to answer or to speak is not foreign to us.
This year was the second year that our family had a garden. We bought some seed and a starter kit and we let the kids plant the seeds. We waited and waited for the seeds to grow into plants, and now our back deck is covered with plants. Waiting for that first summer tomato is hard, I will admit, but the more we waited with the kids, checking the garden each morning, the more anticipation grew. I would love to tell you that we have a wonderful crop of tomatoes, but that was not to be this year, there was another group waiting on our tomatoes, and they decided not to wait until the tomatoes were bright red, but preferred the green ones. So we spent our time of waiting starring out the window waiting to run outside to chase off the squirrels that would throw themselves into the tomato bush and make off with a big green tomato. The kids enjoyed the chase and maybe learned a valuable lesson; something like "even if you wait you may not get what you expect."
I am not sure exactly how we extract meaning from this kind of waiting. But the time spent waiting on our crops to grow and the time spent chasing squirrels is not without a certain level of being. That kind of waiting I will take any time. The waiting holds the same level of reality as the thing that we wait for. There is a moment right before we start service at Cherry Point UMC that always passes so quickly but it holds as much excitement as the moment of benediction. As we all gather for worship and the pianist finishes the prelude, there is brief moment of silence right before we all rise for the processional hymn. In that moment we expect that in the next hour God will show up. Maybe waiting for crops to grow and waiting on each other, and waiting in line at the post office is the same, or bares some resemblance to the moment right between the end of the prelude and the beginning of processional--that brief silence before the chaos of worship. We may be expecting big ripe tomatoes, but we may end up chasing the squirrels away.
Grace and Peace,
Rev. Mark Woods
