Wait: (verb) “Stay; remain: be.”
We sometimes equate waiting as lack, as non-action, as void. However, and speaking very much as one who does not like to wait, it is somewhat comforting knowing that waiting is an action. It can feel like so much less. I am the person who will choose the two-mile road with no stoplights over the quarter mile road one with them. Yet, while waiting can feel like the hardest task we are called to, ironically, waiting times are resting times. As someone who has historically had trouble slowing down, resting has been about as lackluster a concept to me as waiting. (I say “historically” as having young children has rather turned that on its head, however, and that elusive state known as rest is now seen for the glorious gift it is.)
Waiting denotes a pause, as does resting. And whether we find ourselves in the austerity of the desert or the lushest of oases, we can often be driven to either extreme simply in the quest for meaning.
For most of us, utter depletion, bone-deep exhaustion, or just a vague sense of weariness are not intentional stops along the way to completion of our endeavors, but that is where we are at times waylaid. Somehow, pacing ourselves did not work into the plan. Other times, our momentum slows to a creep when resources we’d counted upon are consumed.
What we sometimes identify as garden-variety impatience can have a deeper root: lack of trust. If we are honest, we feel like Sally waiting with Linus for the Great Pumpkin that never actually arrives. We do not wait for what we do not expect. If we do not trust, waiting is not only difficult, it is impossible.
What is interesting about the definition of waiting as “stay~remain~be” is that they are all synonyms for identity, and consistency. Perhaps we are shortchanging ourselves more than we know when we knowingly or unwittingly limit our chance to in a sense bake fully by resting adequately. Maybe that is in part what it means to be bread of life for others, even as Christ was: he himself had to “bake” by spending time in lonely places where he could commune with the Father before he could be broken, and given. How much more do we need to submit to the process of resting, in order to come into our fullness, so that we may likewise be given, and share the nourishment of a life renewed with others weary from their own journey.
When we are called to wait, we can rest in knowing God is doing something we cannot. As writer/speaker Reuben Welch once said: “When nothing is happening, something is happening.”