Holy Waiting

For God alone my soul waits in silence;
     from him comes my salvation.
He alone is my rock and my salvation,
     my fortress; I shall never be shaken.  Psalm 62:1-2

I'm not very good at waiting. That doesn't make me at all unusual. We live in a results oriented culture. We want things fixed, straightened out and made better, and we want it right now. The coach, CEO, or politician brought in to work wonders often gives way to a new savior after failing to meet expectations. And school systems, companies, and church congregation sometimes jump from one fad to the next, ever hopeful that some new way will turn things around. Rarely do we do much waiting. Even more rarely do we wait for God.

"Be still and know that I am God," says Psalm 46. Stillness is surely a close cousin to waiting, and so we aren't terribly good at it either. Being still isn't productive. We need to do something.

And yet, many of us complain about the cost of our hectic lives. We lament the stress and anxiety of our age that demands more production, more results, more efficiency. But to what end? Why do we complain about how things are but seem so resistance to an alternative, even a holy one?

A fair amount has been written about what stressed out and anxiety laden places congregations have become in our time. Not that anyone wants this to be so. Indeed many hope that church would offer something better, yet we manage to import our hectic, impatient, productive ways into our congregations.

I fear there is a great deal of idolatry in all our busyness. We think nothing can happen unless we do it. God's not going to do it; it's up to us. It could be risky to wait for God. How long to wait? What if God doesn't come through? Perhaps it's better to believe in our concept of God than to wait for God and be disappointed. Such disappointment could be an existential threat to our faith. Better to believe in God but not expect anything much.

"For God alone my soul waits in silence." How do we learn to wait? More to the point, how do we learn to trust in something other than our own productive capacities? Perhaps it begins simply by acknowledging that there is a holiness to slowing down, to resting,  to stopping and waiting for God.

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