LIFE IS WAITING

   Dr. Abraham Maslow, noted psychologist and teacher, spoke of “peak experiences” in one’s life. Such experiences don’t come often…being born, knowing God, graduation from school, getting the job that you have worked so hard to prepare for, marriage, the birth of your child.

   Over the years, I have come to realize that, along with these peak experiences, there are many preceding and often long waiting periods. We wait to be born, wait to learn about and accept God, wait to graduate, wait to get married, wait for the first child. Remember how long, how taxing it was the wait until we were old enough, mature enough to drive a car or to date? Even more excruciating may be the waiting to die, to graduate from this life to a life with our Creator.

   Can you imagine the emotional, let alone the physical pain, that a terminal patient must endure? This becomes especially true when the human body refuses to give up and life seems to continue way beyond what the professionals said it would, beyond what the individual thought he could ever endure, beyond what his family and friends seemed to think was even fair.

  In the book, Christian Caregiving, A Way of Life, used by our Stephen Ministers to educate them in the best possible caring methods, Dr. Kenneth Haugk states, “What a comfort that Jesus is not only ‘in’ you, but ‘with’ you —with both the caregiver (Stephen Minister) and the care receiver. He is before you to lead you. He is behind you to guard you. He is beside you that he may support you. He is above you to bless you. In short, he is with and for you.”

   Knowing and accepting this, those even waiting to die may find the waiting period less painful and easier on both the emotional and physical levels. The faith gained in our Christian teachings of life after death makes the waiting worth the wait.

   Outside the Bible, of the many things that have been written on immortality, none has put the case more aptly than the great passage from Lord Tennyson’s “In Memoriam”:

                         Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
                          Thou madest man, he knows not why;
                           He thinks he was not made to die;
                           And Thou hast made him: Thou art just.

   Was there no other reason for making the waiting justified, for making it hopeful, no matter how difficult, the goodness of God is reason enough.

 --Judson Joyce

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 WAITING

I am reminded of the hymn, “Just As I Am.”
Just as I am, and waiting not
To rid my soul of one dark blot
To thee, whose love can cleanse each spot,
O Lamb of God, I come.
--Charlotte Elliott (1836)

It seems we are waiting throughout our lifetime:
Waiting to be born.
Waiting to grow up.
Waiting to go to school.
Waiting to learn enough.
Waiting to be successful.
Waiting to find love.
Waiting to find a faith to nourish our souls.
Waiting to be married.
Waiting for children to gladden our lives.
Waiting for the years to enrich us.
Waiting for a love done to die.
Waiting to find a new love.
Waiting to find friends to support us.

And finally,
Waiting to greet the baby Jesus, who will bring
his message of peace and love to us and to the world.

--Beverly Harker