Lord,
hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my
supplications!
I
wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope;
my
soul waits for the Lord
more
than those who watch for the morning,
more
than those who watch for the morning.” (Ps. 130:1-2, 5-6)
Daily
Scripture Reading – Psalm 130
This week
with the death of South African Nelson Mandela, there are a host of
topics that come to mind when I think about Mandela's life and the
good news of the gospel. The topic of waiting and forgiveness was
important in Mandela's life and to the meaning of Advent. I find the
story of Mandela's life inspiring in regard to what he would not let
happen to him. With all the years he spent imprisoned, it would have
been easy to understand how he would have only wanted to get even and
seek revenge upon his captors, but no, he chose to seek peace and
forgiveness. His choice helped to lead a nation to reconciliation
rather than hate and warfare.
In Mandela's
story he was forced to wait, until that time when he might someday be
released, though that was never guaranteed. The years of waiting
could have turned him bitter and hateful, but he used the time to
seek another path. He said once to former President Bill Clinton
that his captors took many things away from him and could have taken
his life, but he realized they could never take away his heart and
mind. He would have to voluntarily give these away and he was not
going to give them up, but develop both his heart and mind so they
would help him through this time of imprisonment and the years ahead.
To
endure the struggles and the periods of waiting, similar to Mandela's
would be unimaginable to us. Most of the time, we have great
difficulty in waiting. And we certainly don’t wait in silence. Most
of the time, we hurry and we push. We split time into tenths of
seconds. We complain when a traffic light turns red and holds us up
longer than we would like. The press of hurrying creates harried and
hassled souls, disconnected from life and from kindness itself. There
is a way of being and knowing that dimly remembers that waiting in
hope is an attitude of faith.
Waiting
in silence, creating space for steadfast love to grow within, may be
the most essential practice of all. It is in many ways the spirit of
Advent, that time of the Christian liturgical year when we practice
the waiting for hope, faith and love and trusting in new life not yet
fully known.
Trappist
monk Thomas Merton remarked that life is a perpetual Advent. He
sensed that in that waiting, trust began to grow. Trust in God, trust
in the Holy One who is beyond all that is created and is the source
of all things, seen and unseen. Trusting and waiting allow the
loving-kindness that is the essence of God’s own Life to grow in
us, and to bear fruit that we never expected.
... one of the essential paradoxes of Advent: that while we wait for God, we are with God all along, that while we need to be reassured of God's arrival, or the arrival of our homecoming, we are already at home. While we wait, we have to trust, to have faith, but it is God's grace that gives us that faith. As with all spiritual knowledge, two things are true, and equally true, at once. The mind can't grasp paradox; it is the knowledge of the soul. - Michelle Blake, "The Tentmaker," 1999, p. 153“I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope;” (Ps. 130:2)
Grant me O God the capacity to wait in hope, to allow your own loving-kindness to grow in me, for the life of your world. Amen.
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