Holy Waiting -

I don't like to wait - for anything. For me, that's probably because I think about things quickly and I think I know what the next step is to take. That may or may not be right, but it's what I think!

There is a quality to waiting that is Holy Waiting. Most of us are not inclined to do this very well. In fact, we are not encouraged to wait - for anything. When a candidate for the presidency is asked a question, they are expected to have an answer, right now. When a parent asks a child a question, the child better have the answer, right now. When we stop at a market on the way home from work and we're in a hurry to get dinner on the table, you want to make it through the line at the store, right now.

It's a bit of wisdom to know that it is all right to take time to think about things. It's really ok! Even in your work, if someone comes to you with a problem, learn to say: "let me think about that, and I'll get back to you." Then you can mull things over and possibly, some new thoughts will come to you that wouldn't have been there at the beginning.

Holy Waiting is another thing. Holy Waiting is what you do when you don't know what you want to do next in your life. Holy Waiting is what you do when you don't have the answer, for once. Holy Waiting is what you do when you trust that things are going to work out, whether you can see that or not!
"Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay...
Yet it is the law of all progress
that is made by passing through
some stages of instability -
and that may take a very long time." --- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.

If this is a time in your life when the future seems uncertain, and for once you are stopped dead in your tracks without knowing what to do or which way to turn,
practice Holy Waiting.
Warmly,
Mary Elyn