We spend a lot of our lives waiting for things. And we sometimes find some time on a Sunday to wait on God and see what he wants to do or say to us in a service. There is a famous drama by Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot. It was an endless waiting for Godot. The drama is interpreted as the men’s waiting for God. The playwright didn’t reveal the actual meaning of waiting. But if think spiritually, the above interpretation is absolutely fair to the notion.
People learn to wait until its time to reach. The longer you wait for something, the more you have to trust it will arrive; and the more you have to trust that the waiting process is happening for a reason and that God might be teaching you things through the waiting that might otherwise pass you by. Further, living in a state of anxious waiting has the potential to remind us of God’s centrality in our lives. It often takes the prospect of losing something to remind us, albeit perhaps painfully, that God is indeed bigger than the thing or scenario we were waiting on and hoping for.
Waiting can help us not only to deepen our trust but to heighten our listening and desire for God. Learning to see and partake in these gifts in the midst of waiting can be a life-changing shift for a Christian. I think it’s important, especially during Lent, that the days we spend anticipating Easter are days of value, learning and growing. It might be helpful to consider how this reflects on our times of sung worship on a Sunday; the songs are the ones that focus on God’s unchanging faithfulness through our changeable and hidden futures. If we can enter into a place of worship, where we are seeking God’s peace in and through our worries and our waiting, without sidelining or diminishing them and yet without allowing them to become obstacles that rival God in size and importance, then we can be sure that we are in a healthy and expectant place.
Lent is a damn waiting for the Resurrection. Through purification of both our body and soul, we should be qualified to see the resurrected Christ.