SOME WAITING TIMES #2
(In My Personal Life)
From my earliest year I had an inquisitive mind and a passion
for learning, almost disturbing to those around, which grew into a
determination to attend college, no matter what. Early on, perhaps due to
the influence of my parents, devotees of good literature and music, I fell
in love with books, even loving the “aroma” of books in father’s large
library. Skipping two elementary grades, I elected all the high school
courses in literature and history available—with music and speech thrown
in for good measure. It seemed I couldn’t wait to enter college.
Working
toward that goal, I stowed away ninety percent of every dollar I earned teaching
piano weekly from the age of 12. College scholarships
were hard to come by in those years and I realized pastors’ incomes disallowed much savings. I had been promised monetary help from my
uncle in Calgary; some came after anxious months of waiting. The
Great Depression bashed many plans…but I borrowed money,
cleaned a banker’s home weekly (near Albion College) and did
receive a Methodist Advocate scholarship, and also attended summer
school sessions in order to graduate in three years. Completing my first
graduate degree required exceeding waiting—often
waiting to buy food
until I would complete the typing of long education papers for other
students at Northwestern University, at ten cents a page with carbon
copies for each page! Slow-going for 200-page papers! Later graduate
work toward higher degrees required less stringent waiting as those
studies were done during my teaching years.
There have been countless waiting times for answers to
prayer—for God to help me solve many problems as I pushed forward and
worked toward a goal. Waiting for so many programs to succeed, waiting for
my students to complete assignments, and waiting for loved ones to recover
from long illnesses—and finally watching and waiting as my beloved husband
left me, in a hospital bed only a year and a half ago. Now there is
waiting to recover poise, assurance, stability with the help of friends
and God.
Nothing compares, however, with the long centuries of waiting
for God’s gift from highest heaven for a savior: Jesus Christ, the Hope of
the world. All of Isaiah chapter 53 foretold His coming—the expectancy,
the Root of Jesse’s tree…Emmanuel! His name is Wonderful! There Is
Something About That Name!! God sent His prophets as messengers to
prepare the way for the coming of Jesus, our Lord and Savior.
And today, dear God, amid post “9-11” fears, uncertainties,
raise us up on eagle’s wings, hold us in the palm of Your hand—and set us
free.
--Virginia
H. Williams
Go to Top of Page
A couple who are world travelers, and
friends of mine for years, agreed at first to present a program on Saudi
Arabia, where they often visited their daughter and son-in-law doctor.
However, the date of my program
conflicted with their planned time of departure for another world tour.
Finally, though, they decided to change their schedule to accommodate our
program time. They would wait, go later. Just before the presentation, a
short time ago, my friend turned to me and said, “Virginia, our travel
plans until we rescheduled it in order to be here tonight, would have put
us on the island at the exact time and place with those Americans and
Australians who were killed by terrorists. The Lord and you had an
unexpected part in saving our lives—through waiting”
--Virginia H. Williams
Go to Top of Page
_______________________________________________________________________
Read Psalm
90:12-17
Christmas comes when we need it the most, when days are short
and nights are dark and long and cold. Christmas comes with its Light, its
Hope, its Good News of Life, its joyous songs. Most of all, it comes with
its birth of Love Incredible, Incarnate, God as a baby, lacking nothing in
divinity nor humanity.
How could we “number our days,” as the
Psalmist suggests, so that this Advent, each day will prepare us uniquely
for Christmas Day?
 Perhaps during Advent this year we could make our own Advent
calendar. Instead of using one with ready-made doors to open and
pre-planned discoveries to make, we could take a blank calendar and note
what special thing we have done each day to strengthen our relationship
with God, while we are waiting for the coming of Christmas. We might write
a note on our calendar of some unexpected and significant experience of
the presence of God, or a Bible reading we did, or a loving act we did for
Christ, a special letter we wrote, or anything that enhances our time of
waiting for the Christ who will come.
Let us make each day of our Advent
waiting a day of personal learning, growing, deepening our relationship
with God, a day of prayer, of study, of outreach to a needy world. Let
each day of Advent bear witness to others of our love for God’s Son and of
his place of priority in our lives.
Prayer
O God of Advent and Christmas, help us to make this time of
waiting more meaningful this
year—that our hearts
and minds and spirits may be prepared for the birth of Christ in us.
Amen.
--Evelyn P. Moore
Go to Top of Page
WAITING ON THE TABLE
Once upon a time on the Missouri River, a man and woman
demonstrated side-by-side the two ways to skin a beaver—“dirty” and
“clean”—to a slack-jawed, citified audience. The two made their
simultaneous first cuts, but the non-stop-talking/hacking-man was done
with his “dirty” in twenty minutes, plopping down on a stump, jumping from
one beaver story to the next, while the woman did her beaver “clean,”
quiet and meticulous for another hour. Both the beavers were long gone
before the event started—frozen for months before their performance—but
had they been alive on the table, which beaver would I have rather
been? There are those long waits, waiting for my operation, and then
it seems God skins me both ways: feels like “dirty,” rough, and furious at
the time, with a lot of talk, talk, talk on one side, and silence,
silence, silence on the Other Side; but, in the post-op, while I lie there
quietly between white curtains, I get the sense that God has done the
thorough, “clean,” shining silver scalpeling—just another operation of
the Perfect Will.
I got a Holy skinning four years back,
but I haven’t talked much about it until here. I’ve been buddy-buddy with
Arthur It is for years and we had never learned to sleep well together.
Being an addict/alcoholic in recovery mode, I have to step gingerly around
the medication quicksand; but at times bad desperation has precluded good
judgment. Even with two knee operations and anti-inflammatory, by June
of 1998 I had accrued but five good nights of sleep in six months. I
begged my doctor for help—it was sleep or go nuts, I said. Ultram, he
said. Out of six million, only five had become addicted. A safe drug,
obviously. Oh, Happy Day!!! The first night I took the prescribed dosage I
fell into a sweet sleep! The next night I doubled the dosage so I’d sleep
even better. Addicted again!!! Damn, Damn, Damned into six months of using
up my month’s supply of medication in two weeks or less. I went to my
meetings, church, and pretended a normal life, but I was fright-filled at
work, blessed-up or out of control at home, and living a lie up and down
the avenue. It wasn’t the doctor’s fault. He had his clinical statistics
that proved it wasn’t addictive. It was me. I had gotten tired of waiting
on God. I had put myself in the hands of the Devil before I ever got to
the doctor’s door. Hopeless—again.
But I hadn’t stopped praying. I
learned back in 1982 that prayer was my air, my water, my food. Now, back
in the addiction, I was begging the Lord for a way out, every day, many
times a day. During one of those knee-times, swamped in guilt, Jesus let
me know that I would come out on the other side. I clutched Jesus like
Jacob clutched the Wrestling Angel and demanded a blessing out of my
idiocy and suffering. And I waited for the Light.
Two months later I drank again for two
days. Seventeen years without a drink. I almost died. In order to save my
life, my doctor shipped me up to Flagstaff as a suicide case. There I was
one more: on a bleak white bed, in a bleak white room, under a bleak white
light. In came the vitals’ girl. “Remember me?” she said. “You were my
teacher in Kentucky seven years ago.” You can figure chances and
coincidences, and you can spend your life figuring God out of the picture,
but I couldn’t. I got a good night’s sleep. The next morning I asked the
diminutive Filipino doctor what had given me that good sleep and would it
work again? She crossed her fingers, looked up at God, and said, “Trazodone.”
She had a silver cross around her neck. I was back home, clean and sober
with a clear conscious contact with my Lord again. That part of the wait
was over.
That was “dirty” skinning with a clean
ending. Thanks be to God that Jesus gets down and rolls in the dirt with
us, and sits and stands with us in our time of waiting to be skinned, and
in our skinning. He got a pretty “dirty” skinning on the cross himself. He
does for us what we cannot do for ourselves, and He never said it would be
easy. He waits on us and with us. Alleluia!!!!
--Gratefully
in the Living Christ, Anonymous Bosch
WAITING AND WAITING
The year was 1948. I was twenty years of age. High school graduation was 2
˝ years behind me. Sixteen months in the service had seen me take a
one-year tour to Japan with the occupation army.
For the last thirteen months, I had
been waiting to see Pat, the North Dakota girl with whom I had fallen in
love just prior to my leaving for boot camp. Many letters had been sent,
many received—although I had waited more than two months before the first
one caught up with me overseas!
Now I was waiting, waiting, for the time when we could be
married and live together as a united couple. However, college was ahead
of us. How long would we have to wait? Would it ever happen?
Would Pat ever be really mine?
A Sunday school teacher had challenged
a group of us as junior highs to wait for the right person. Her challenge
was to keep ourselves sexually pure and become the kind of person who
would be attractive to the type of person with whom we wanted to spend our
lives.
Pat’s family
moved away that June. We spent the next year attending colleges as far
apart as North Dakota and Indiana, waiting… The next year we attended the
same college, seeing each other often, waiting… Then there was another
year apart as Pat returned to North Dakota to cram her last two years into
a school term and two summers. We waited…and then Pat finally
graduated on August 1 and we were married on August 3!
What a wonderful 51 years have
followed those five long and sometimes agonizing years of waiting! The
rewards of each having waited for a one-and-only have been beyond
measuring. Best of all, God has from the beginning been the third Person
in our partnership.
--The Rev. Dick Unkenholz
Waiting!
Everyone in the station that night was waiting for southbound, northbound,
anywhere-bound train home for Christmas! Snow had started falling in
light, feathery flakes two days ago. Now, there was a sure-enough
Midwestern blizzard with snow piled high outside the railway station. Two
hours of this and nothing human or on wheels was moving anywhere.
Some people were half
asleep in their seats, others meandering to and
from the several small shops surrounding the concourse. Some mothers with
children were traipsing back and forth to rest rooms, and others sat with
their heads buried in newspapers or magazines. Two young men sporting
Northwestern University jackets were downing endless Cokes at the bar.
Train callers had long ago given up announcing train
departures; lighted train schedule boards had showed the same signs for
hours: Delayed…Cancelled.
 It was
Christmas Eve…and we were snowbound! I
could hear my dear preacher-dad’s admonishing in the past, “Patience is a
virtue.” Could he have thought of this
ever happening to his teacher-daughter? But for a year, I had admonished
my high school students: Some day you may be caught
for hours in a depot with no earthly means of escape from boredom at staring at the
same sights of people and objects around you. Your mind takes control,
remembering the good or the bad thoughts of the past. Choose the good.
Therefore, this is tomorrow’s assignment: memorize one of these Robert
Frost poems.” (I can still hear the groans.)
With my big suitcase tucked under my
legs, another bag on my lap and one arm around my shoulder bag, I settled
in to follow my own student assignment—“Snowbound” and continued on
through “Snowstorm” and “Birches” and others. Finally, sleepily, I
finished “The Twenty-Third Psalm” (which was comforting) and succumbed to
deep sleep in that huge, silent Chicago railway station.
Morning arrived and a white world
outside. The storm, however, had abated. Street workers and machines were
clearing sidewalks and streets…and, praise be, the lights were flashing on
the train departure boards! Double-engined trained, snorting steam, pulled
into the station—and passengers arose, grabbed their luggage, and moved
like one great human wave toward departure exits.
It was Christmas Day in old
Chicago—and we were homeward-bound, I humming, “Praise God from who all
blessings flow.”
--Virginia H. Williams
WAITING
Read Psalm
37:1-11
Hours and days of waiting seem longer
than other hours and days. They can stretch out interminably while we wait
for a letter, a phone call, a diagnosis, a baby’s birth, a loved one
having surgery, a visit from a long-absent friend, the results of an
examination, the call about a job interview—an endless list. So much of
our time is spent in a “waiting mode.”
How do
we wait? Often we wait impatiently, anxiously, fearfully, nervously.
How would God have us wait? There is a difference between waiting for and waiting upon, and perhaps we need
to wait upon God while we are waiting for something. We need to
add the vertical aspect of waiting upon to the horizontal aspect of
the waiting for, so that all our time of waiting is sanctified by the
presence of the God who waits with us. All will happen in God’s
good time. Jesus knew this when he delayed going to Bethany
after he heard the news of Lazarus’ death. He waited until He
knew that God’s time was right.
The wise men waited, most likely for
many years, until they saw the particular star that had been foretold.
Mary and Joseph waited for the birth of their baby, and they must have
entrusted each day to God who had planned all this. The disciples were
told to wait in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit came upon them
If we are preoccupied only with
waiting, we are robbed of the present moment and time passes often without
our awareness of what it holds. During Advent we wait with hope, peace,
joy, and love, redeeming the time by consciously waiting upon God and
watching for God’s activity in our lives.
Prayer
Eternal God of all time and eternity, in the fullness of
time you sent your Son to the earth to
redeem your people.
Make us patient and diligent while we wait, redeeming the time and anticipating with sure
hope that all time is in your planning and that we will never be disappointed. Amen.
--Evelyn P. Moore
She went from
millionaire to pauper, from marriage to divorce court, from living in a
mansion to living month to month. Her husband was a successful
entrepreneur.
The marriage was shaky. He insisted on
control of everything and everyone. He abused her physically and
emotionally and drove her children out of the house. She had no money of
her own; everything was in his name. There were numerous calls to police;
they began to live separately.
At first she denied the lump in her breast
because there was no health insurance. When she did go to the doctor, her
diagnosis—malignant, surgery—caused panic. She was alone. With no living
relatives, far from friends, and a husband who vowed to pay nothing
towards here support or medical bills, she began to spiral downward,
feeling helpless and hopeless. What would happen to her? Where would she
live, if she lived?
 Following surgery, chemotherapy sapped her strength but not her will.
She filed for divorce and talked her way into a rental house with no idea
how she would make the payments. With no food and no income, she swallowed
her pride and became a regular at the food bank. This
beautiful woman, upbeat, outgoing, who would light up a room with her
personality, humor and ability to make people feel good, was constantly
sick, lost her hair, ate beans and rice for many meals and saw little hope
for the future.
Her husband hid their assets, declared bankruptcy
and said he couldn’t help her. The judge agreed. What should she do next?
How could she go on? This was her lowest point, and she considered giving
up.
God knew about
her pain and put people in her path to help. She started searching for a
church home and found a “fit.” On that first Sunday, knowing no one and
self-conscious about the straw hat hiding her bald head, she was greeted
by people who took the time to talk to her, to hug her, to sweep her into
their “family.” She has no doubt that God directed her search. This
congregation offered her the love and support missing for so many years
and, in her words, “The hugs and warmth felt from these people helped me
find my smile again, my inside smile.” She started attending a Bible study
class; one of the members gave her a Bible. When they discovered her need,
the church responded with a fund for her bills.
This is not a
Cinderella story; there is no prince charming or happy ever after; but
there is hope. The chemotherapy treatments just ended. She negotiated for
a decrease in her rent and has had several promising job interviews. She
is no longer consumed about getting her half of the
marital estate but rather by following God’s plan for her life. Her
renewed faith has shown her hope. She is convinced she will make it and is
doing what she needs to for survival. I am so very proud of my friend…what
courage!
--Kay Keeley
WAITING TO SING THE CHRISTMAS SONGS
Read Luke
2:8-14
The choirs are faithfully practicing Christmas carols and
anthems, making sure that every note and inflection is just right, making
our Christmas songs as beautiful as is humanly possible. Did the angels
rehearse their Christmas son, “Glory to God in the highest”? Was it
difficult for the angel chorus to wait to announce to the world this
amazing good news? What a secret to have to keep for a little while
longer! To whom would they sing? Would the world listen?
We wait to hear the wondrous Christmas songs. They echo in our
minds and hearts from so many other years, so many other Christmases. Yet
we wait with anticipation to sing them again—to have them burst forth with
joy and worship at the coming of the infant Jesus—not our waiting songs
any longer, but the songs of realization: “Jesus Christ is born.”
In my Canadian pastoral charges, it
was expected that Christmas carols would be sung at the beginning of
December. After all, they were being played in all the department stores.
“Instant Christmas” was expected at the beginning of Advent. The people
needed to be convinced that, without the waiting and the preparation,
without the Advent songs of longing and expectation, the Christmas carols
could not be so deeply appreciated. They learned to wait.
The songs of Advent are just as important in their own way,
just as amazing, if not so joyous. They help us to related to the years of
waiting for the Messiah, to all the people’s hopes and dreams of freedom
and peace and love. They longed for him more than life, but God had
promised that he would come, and so they waited. We sing our songs of
waiting: “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus” and “O Come, O Come,
Emmanuel,” with all the assurance in the world, for we know
that Christ’s birth will soon be heralded with “Joy To the World.”
Prayer
O God of music
and joy, help us to keep your song in our hearts, to learn new songs of praise, for none are
adequate to express our gratitude for your salvation and your love and your great gift of
Jesus Christ. In his dear name. Amen.
--Evelyn P. Moore
Go to Top of Page
________________________________________________________________
LIFE'S STAGES OF WAITING
Life is composed, it seems, of a
series of waiting times. As a child, there is waiting for the first day of
school, waiting for playtime, for summer vacation…waiting to “grow up.”
Christmas is
perhaps the most exciting waiting time of the year—taking part in church
and school dramatic skits, hoping for gifts and love, enjoying the
material symbols of the season: glittering decorations, Santa Clauses
everywhere, the Hanging of the Greens, a bright star atop the tree;
waiting with expectancy.
The years pass…for youth, the waiting
takes on deeper significance: excelling in studies, waiting to obtain a
driver’s license, waiting to join a school club or get on a school team,
to get a class paper written, to get a job, to graduate, to be called into
military service. Christmastime looms high on their waiting list: dramas
(littlest angel, three wisemen, poor shepherds, rich kings, lowly manger),
music everywhere, parties, special events, rushing here and there, buying
presents; cold and snow and crunch ice beneath their hurrying feet.
As age
increases time rushes faster, competition in school/work
place and the succeeding in each area becomes equally paramount with
discovering a life partner…and most exciting is the child’s birth that had
be waited for—and the joy, with concern, in rearing a family. With life
accelerating and seeming more frenzied, even if more rewarding,
Christmastime arrives without much waiting; the ruse to shop, write
greeting cards, plan special events—all before the witches depart to haunt
ghosts of Halloween Past. But Advent time still holds the spark of love
and joy and new beginnings in the soul—when the child deep inside each one
of us emerges to love the wonder of the Miracle. We are prone to turn to
our childhood past aboard a memory train to some special joy, a bit of
magic that sets our feet upon a starlit village street of long ago. We’re
more aware than in yesteryear of the many roads that lead us to Bethlehem
town and that Christmastime is a many-splendored thing all interwoven from
pages of our lives. So it’s a spiritual renewal time.
But we dare not forget this year that Christmastime holds a different
quality and
measure of meaning to men, women and children exiting on the precarious
fringes of life—waiting. Endless waiting in the cold—strangers at
our gates—the lonely, ill and needy all. As we give from the heart,
let us remember the homeless couple who spent the night in an
animal stall under Judean skies so long ago and brought into the world a
Babe to be worshipped by us all!
--Virginia H. Williams
WAITING AS SACRAMENT AND SYMBOL
I hate to be kept waiting.
It's a grace I lack.
When I sit in the car at the traffic lights
that won’t turn green or behind a slow driver, I grip the wheel, muttering
dire threats… as if it were always a matter of urgency that I get to my
destination in the shortest possible time! Waiting makes me feel out of
control of my life.
I become angry when I’m kept in a waiting
room. Who does he/she think they are, making me wait like this? Waiting
makes me feel unimportant.
Late visitors annoy me.
I’m surprised they dare to walk through my door! But then I’m good at
putting on a smile and pretending it’s all right. Waiting makes me feel
unwanted
There’s the kind of waiting connected with
illness when the only cure is rest. I have to try to relax and trust God
for the future. Waiting makes me feel helpless.
Sometimes I have to
wait in uncomfortable situations, where I’d like to opt for the easy
answer in order to get out. Then my prayer has to be like T.S. Elliot’s
:”Teach me to sit still, even among these rocks.”
Now and then I catch glimpses of a different
kind of waiting. There are moments in prayer when I am contemplative,
allowing God and life to just be. It feels safe to be out of control. And
the stillness doesn’t feel like inactivity because I am aware of divine
activity within me.
And sometimes when I’m listening to someone
(really listening), I have the feeling that my words could get in the way
of the marvelous thing God is doing. So I have to wait and pray with them,
even though we’d both feel more comfortable if I could give advice.
Waiting doesn’t come easy in an instant
society.
Waiting offers me a choice. I can wait
reluctantly, with anger and frustration welling up inside me. I can
struggle against my circumstances and try to manipulate them. I can blame
others for “making me feel unimportant” and I can feel frightened at being
out of control.
Or I can try to sit quietly within my soul
and wait, knowing that I am held securely in the love of God and
ultimately all will be well. Looking at it in that way, every opportunity
for waiting can become a sacrament and a symbol. Perhaps I can use those
occasions in this Advent season, to remind me of the great waiting at the
turning point of time, when the angels held their breath and wondered who
would have eyes to see the Christ.
And the waiting goes on. For the Kingdom is
still taking shape and God’s way is not to force but to invite.
Prayer
 Wait with me,
Lord, this Advent and Christmas. Wait with me and wait for me and wait
upon me. And help my prayers to join in the unceasing stream of prayerful
waiting and hoping that has been carried on from generation to generation,
and which will continue until Your Kingdom is come in all its fullness.
Amen
--Ann Siddall
|
