Degas, Waiting. 1882.
Readings
Old Testament: 15:1-21
Psalm 6
Gospel: John 14:18-31
Epistle: 1 Pet. 1:13-25
Devotional
"Its time to go." Her words flowed through the couch and zapped me like lightning. The baby is coming. The panic hit next, like thunder. We aren't at the hospital. How long does it take to come? I WILL NOT DELIVER A BABY IN THE CAR. She gets up and goes to the kitchen. And starts washing dishes. WHAT ARE YOU DOING? I'm in the car already, honking the horn. We break all land speed records getting to the hospital... only to wait for twelve more hours for my first son to be born.
Waiting is hard. You feel powerless and out of control, at the mercy of time, circumstance, and other people. And the temptation is to treat God like the fast forward button on the remote control, to escape the tension of waiting by having him fast forward to the moment when the tension is eased. But the readings today invite us to think about waiting in a different way. What if God is more concerned with *how* we wait than he is with the fact that we are waiting?
Two contrasting visions of faithful Christian waiting are presented in the readings today. In Psalm 6, the person who is waiting is in anguish. They want to be relieved, they want the waiting to end. But the Psalm is included in the hymnbook of the people of God that we might recognize something- that our waiting is from God, and whether in anguish or in hope, we must receive the delay of our gratification as the next step in the dance of relationship with Him. And we are are empowered to keep dancing, even in anguish, by the knowledge of his good intentions toward us.
1 Peter invites us to consider the question of our holiness in the midst of waiting. We are to see ourselves as exiles in a strange land, still beholden to the country of our Father from whence we came. We are to strive to live our lives according to our old Constitution. This waiting for Jesus is an active waiting- it actively resists the temptation to clutch at impermanent things for salvation. This waiting, more triumphant in tone than that of Psalm 6, nevertheless finds its strength in the same place: the promise of God's goodness to his people.
How does the delay of your gratification shape your dance with God? Can you conform yourself to the kingdom of God in our present waiting?
Hymn
O Christ Our King Creator Lord
Prayer
Pray Psalm 6 aloud.