At the moment, I’m fascinated in books about words, and letters and languages. I’m finding out all sorts of intriguing facts – did you know, for example, that sixteenth-century printers used to keep their capital letters in one case and the other letters in another case, which is why letters became known as Upper Case and Lower Case?! I’ve also discovered all about homophones – words that sound the same but have no relation whatsoever to one another. Take, for example, the word “weight”, meaning a heaviness or a heavy load or object, and the word “wait”, meaning an inactivity until a future expectation happens. Clearly they are very different words.
Advent is a time of “waiting” for that future expectation – waiting for the birth of Christ, waiting for the celebration of Christmas Day. Most of us don’t enjoy having to wait for things, and, in our instantaneous and speedy world, we have all sorts of ways of hurrying things up. As the comedian Steve Wright quipped, ‘I put my instant coffee in my microwave oven and almost went back in time’!
With this is mind, perhaps the word “wait” is not so different to its homophone-partner “weight”. Someone sent me an email this week that described how a teacher picked up a glass of water and asked a group of students how heavy it was. All sorts of answers were called out, ranging from 5 ounces to 30 ounces. The teacher then informed them that the absolute weight has no bearing on our own experience of the weight: “The weight depends on how long I hold it. If I hold it for a minute, it’s no problem at all. If I hold it for an hour, I’ll have a slight ache in my arm. If I hold it for a day, then my whole arm will start to feel numb and paralyzed. In each case, the weight of the glass doesn’t change, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes”.
Sometimes, when we are waiting for something or someone, it can be rather frustrating and wearisome, like an ache in the arm. It can be a somewhat unpleasant experience when we are waiting in a queue in a supermarket or we’re waiting for a friend who’s late once again. But waiting can also be far more serious and severe. Ultimately, waiting can weigh us down. It can be like carrying a heavy load for a long period. It can numb us and paralyze us when we are waiting for recovery from illness, waiting for depression to lift, waiting for light to break through grief, waiting for test results, or waiting for the hurt of broken relationships to heal.
Nothing can completely take away the darkness of some of our waiting. But in all our waiting, Christ can make a difference. To use another homophone, he can make the darkness lighter and he can make the heavy load lighter. In this sense, waiting doesn’t have to always be so frustrating or painful. After all, there are two times of waiting in church calendar – advent and lent – and both have something in common. Both end in new life and joy. It is, therefore, no surprise that almost all the verses in the Bible that mention “waiting” do not relate it to heaviness, pain, and oppression. Instead, they imply that we have a choice to view our waiting in a different way – as a gift where we are invited to treasure each moment. As Isaiah 40:31 puts it: “but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint”.
Whatever kind of waiting we are experiencing, then, we can choose to actively appreciate and cherish. Sometimes our waiting is looking forward in anticipation to a good event. This should be fun and fulfilling, but it can also lead us to live our lives in the future, rather than enjoy the gift of waiting. Over the past year, I have found myself sitting with my one-year-old son and thinking how much I’m looking forward to the next stage of his development – at first it was when he crawls, then when he walks, then when he talks. I was looking at photos of him recently and I realised how much I had missed of the stages he was at by looking to the future. I now challenge myself to appreciate where he is now – you could call it “the waiting for the next stage” – rather than wishing the next stage would come quickly.
There are other times, though, when our waiting is not to do with anticipation, but rather we are forced to wait, due to illness or to a traumatic event. Again, while it may well be difficult, we can wait actively in these moments. During the intense period of my own back injury, before my operation, I had almost 12 months where I was laid up in bed for most of the day. I would venture out for very short daily strolls. But I taught myself to truly appreciate those walks – the beauty of nature, the conversation of friends who visited to walk with me, the silence when I walked alone, the uplifting music when I took my ipod. This was all God at work, and, in spite of my continuing pain, I could not help but celebrate His wonderful, mysterious, and holy gift of life.
‘Active waiting’ is about finding God’s light in your journeys, however long and difficult your wait, however heavy and burdensome your weight. The poet Ralph Waldo Emerson asked the question: “how much of human life is lost in waiting?” And he’s right – how much of life is wasted, waiting for the future to happen? Our time is precious, and active waiting helps us to connect with God and appreciate our time fully. In the words of the author Sharlande Sledge, it helps us to “transform our in-the-meantime into God’s time”.
Sharlande Sledge: Prayer on Waiting
Look upon us gently, Lord, for waiting is not our forte. So many things are… things like moving ahead, fixing what is wrong, planning what is next, diagnosing the problem, cramming more into one day than one person can possibly do before the sun goes down.
But waiting… when we are waiting for the light to shine, when we are waiting for the Word, when we are waiting for a wound to heal, nothing in all the world is harder than waiting.
So in your mercy, Lord, wait with us.
Be very present in waiting. Heal our frenzy. Calm our fears. Comfort those who at this very minute are with every anxious breath and thought waiting for they know-not-what.
Transform our in-the-meantime into your time, while we wait with each other, sit with each other, pray each other into hope, surrounded by your presence, even in the darkness. Especially in the darkness. Amen
See also:
Unto us a Child is Born: A new baby at Christmas
Things-with-wings: A Christmas Reflection
Are you sitting comfortably? Christmas and the wonder of story
Trystan Owain Hughes 
i find the instancy of the way we live makes waiting for attaining anything pleaserable more difficult, in that any length probably seems longer than it ever has done. We’re just not used to waiting, and when we do feel good, we equally don’t want to let it go. Sitting through a depression or patience with uncomfortable feelings are things we usually cannot wait to be rid of, and we sometimes even alleviate this discomfort with unhelpful actions.
I think in both instances what makes waiting so hard is the inability to accept being in either a bad place, or a worse place than we expect to be in the future. We aren’t educated to accept discomfort or pain as part of everyday life where we fixate on permanent happiness and are given messages that consuming products, info, media, sex will instantaneously answer our problems. This is after all big business.
We have to accept waiting as a part of life, and if we do it may help us realise when we digress into distractions or avoidance. We can even embrace waiting periods and look at what can be appreciated in the present moment rather than in the hopefully-better or terrifyingly-worrisome future. Only then do we have any hope that waiting can be strengthening rather than draining. Being active in waiting means being responsible for our welfare as much as we can in that time, and not expecting another event or person to necessarily step in and magic everything better. (My big trap is to fall into ‘active passivity’ and engage in unhelpful behaviours that give the illusion to the self of being engaged in effort, but in fact avoid the moment at hand.) Sometimes this responsibility is to simply notice the qualities of the waiting moments and to engage with the present for what it is, rather than what it could be.
Waiting for Christmas is waiting for something ultimately weighty in theological (and material!) terms, and can be so testing. It can feel like we are waiting for all the excess to be over rather than for the birth of Jesus! But just because we are preparing for a big day of great importance doesnt mean we have to be constantly involved the associated busy-ness and heightened anxiety. Finding even a moment to breathe can really help and I’m grateful that your prayer has provided that for me today. Thanks! X
I have very much fallen out with wordpress mobile app after writing a reply to this which disappeared into the ether!
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What a beautiful reflection to begin Advent with. Thank you.
Thank you, Denise. Hope you are well. God bless, Trystan