Wait!

An awful lot loaded into one little word in the English language.

Wait. It's not ready yet. You’ll ruin it if you take it out now

Wait. Slow down. I can’t keep up with you. My legs are too short

Wait. We can’t rush this. I need some time to think this through.

Wait. It won’t be long now. You’ll be amazed when it gets here.

Wait. There’s nothing more we can do. You just have to be patient. 

There’s a whole lot of principles packed into those five simple examples.

They have a lot do with ‘time’ and ‘process’.

They also involve mismatched expectations and different time frames or levels of understanding.

They also imply that a certain amount of stopping or inactivity is needed for a good outcome.

This much we understand.

Waiting is very much a way of life.

It’s just that when it happens to us, and we don’t have a clear timetable on which to pin our hopes and expectations, waiting becomes difficult.

And if I think I am struggling with the concept right now, and find it difficult to wait…

Then I think then of a nine year old boy in Lisbon. 

Who’s been waiting almost nine months now for an answer.

Both his parents, after a long wait, finally got their permission to move to the UK.

But his passport together with those of his two brothers, somehow got lost in the process of having their permission to move to the UK stamped.

His mother moved to England as her visa to enter was about to expire.

And so he remained in Lisbon with his father and two older brothers.

Waiting. Three months became six months. 

No explanations. No-one to say why there was such a delay.

Eventually after almost nine months, one brother’s passport was returned. 

His father took him over to be with his mother in the UK.

So that left two brothers now at home with Dad

Then his oldest brother’s passport came, so he could go.

So he’s left on his own with Dad, wondering in his nine year old head, why me?

The Bible is often about waiting, but there the periods are even more scary.

Forty years? In the Wilderness? 

Hmm. Maybe my waiting is not so unbearable.

Trudging

Trudging.. something about that word, that sounds just .. tired. 

I’m not a mountaineer by any stretch of the imagination, but I’ve been on a number of hill climbs during my life. Snowdonia, the Lake District, the Scottish hills, the northern mountains of Pakistan. In my experience, there’s something that almost always happens.

The hike starts out with anticipation, and high spirits. There’s a sense of a goal to reach for, a looming mountain on a distant horizon, perhaps. And there’s the enjoyment of small delights along the way - going up a gully by a babbling stream, spotting an eagle or a buzzard or other bird of prey. But then when you have made it up and over the first ridge, you see the peak, as far off in the distance as it ever was, and before you an endless vista of bogland and rough terrain. You get down into it, and starting trudging. It seems endless and impassable. The trek becomes a trudge. One weary foot after another. Stumbling through squelching mud. Your foot gets caught in the roots of bracken. And you just have to keep pressing on.

Since our return from Greece it has seemed like that. That burst of activity getting things sorted, so we could put things in order in Athens. But then to return, and  know that there’s a long and uncertain road ahead. So for now at least, life is about trudging through this bog, and trying to stay positive and look forward and not down.

Return from Athens B: Foxes have Holes

Last week, in the middle of the cleaning, and all the boxes, and the trudging through thick snow between the apartment we were clearing up and our friends’ house where we were now staying, another word from Jesus - 

“Foxes have holes” at one point, he said to someone who was enthusiastically declaring he would follow him wherever, “and the birds of the air have their nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head” **

Suddenly from the context we were living, and in the midst of all the insecurity of leaving a place we loved, and packing up with no clear idea of what’s ahead, that word carried a particular poignancy.

Here’s the Lord of all the Universe, the incarnate Son of God, the one of whom John said, in his Christmas account,** that he came and dwelt among us, or more literally, "pitched his tent" among us. And, here, he is saying, I don’t actually have a home here, you know. Of course, we understand that he had a parental home in Nazareth, where he spent his childhood and youth. But it would appear that, for much of the three years of active ministry leading up to his death on the cross, Jesus lived as an itinerant teacher, eating and sleeping wherever he found a welcome. 

That word is also a statement of his detachment from this world in which we live. He, who came from the glory of heaven, entered this world at a particular place and time, moved among his community, loved them, gave himself for them, was completely committed to them, but he never actually belonged. He never possessed a piece of land, built a house or raised a family. His was a temporary residency. 

So, when we think of all that, our own displacement from Greece back to N Ireland, pales into insignificance, and just as the “treasures in heaven” take on a new meaning, so too the idea of “I go to prepare a place for you … that where I am there you may be also,” ** becomes hugely significant for us.  

** Luke 9:58, John 1:14, John 14:3