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Waiting

Marisol McRae

“Sorry I’ve kept you waiting,” Lynn said. I rose from the corner of the airport lobby where I had squatted, safe from the avalanche of people that had threatened to trample me. Although confused by her greeting, I didn’t ask her to clarify. Lynn seemed in a hurry. I gathered my luggage and followed her through a door that opened and closed of its own accord, to an orange Volvo with flashing hazard lights. Too preoccupied about getting through the door unhurt and driving to Lynn’s home safely in a broken-down car, I said nothing.

Twenty-three years have passed since Lynn welcomed me to Canada. I’ve since learned that the door had an electronic eye and wouldn’t have closed until after I had gone through, and that the Volvo wasn’t broken down, just parked illegally because Lynn was running behind schedule. But I remained confused by Lynn’s greeting.

I grew up in a Philippine village where electricity was a rarity. Labour-saving – let alone devices that made this possible – was foreign to me. The process of working seemed more important than meeting product quotas or deadlines. Grandpa often said that “nothing couldn’t wait that was worth waiting for”. I sensed that anything worthwhile took time to accomplish. Waiting was simply a fact of life.

The biggest surprise when I moved to Canada was discovering how much I could accomplish within a given time period. I simply had to take charge of my life – set goals, follow schedules, push the right buttons. Deadlines became all encompassing, efficiency the key to success. Buying into this thinking, I eventually found waiting a waste of time. All I had to do had to be done now. All I needed to know had to be known now.

Then, God used time to teach me that taking charge of my life is nothing more than an illusion created by the demands of a consumer-oriented culture. While the production of goods and services that meet the legitimate needs of humanity is a good thing, its excess runs counter to God’s call on my life. It conditions me to a harried lifestyle and exploits the person it claims to serve – enticing me to purchase goods and services I don’t need.

How then must I respond to the demands of this culture, which is exhausted by the very mechanisms it invented to make life easier? In saying “Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28), God woos me away from the trap of working-more-to-earn-more-to-buy-more. He beckons me, instead, to co-create with Him, and shares with me a taste of His love. He asks me not to take charge of my life, but to take charge of my responses to His call of love.

God is present in every moment, and calls me to be present there also. God calls me to love my neighbour and myself because He wants to live in every one of us. Depending on the situation, this might mean saying “yes”, “no” or even nothing. I suspect that discerning how best to respond in any situation depends on my relearning the art of waiting – not waiting passively for something to happen, but waiting with expectation of the fulfillment of God’s promises, an alertness to the workings of His grace at any given moment in my day.

I’m recognizing that I cannot live my life as though I were God. I cannot expect things to happen when I want them to, the unknown to become known when I wish it to be. I’m recognizing that because God isn’t bound by time (2 Peter 3:8), He doesn’t have to beat it. Less interested in efficiency than in character, He takes time to teach me what I need to learn.

Abraham and Sarah (Hebrews 11:11-12) and Zechariah and Elizabeth (Luke 1:13,18,57) waited years for God’s promise of a son. Simeon (Luke 2:25-32) and Anna (Luke 2:36-38) waited a lifetime to see the Messiah. God is never in a hurry. He calls me to embrace the pain of not doing and the cloud of not knowing. Fear pressures me to control people, situations – my life. Love urges me to let Him take control. It is His way of being my God.

Marisol McRae counsels individuals, couples and families in Surrey and Langley, B.C. This article was previously published in the spring 1999 issue of Sophia.

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Last modified January 31, 2001.

© 2001 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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