Friday, December 13, 2019 Titus 2:11-14
11For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, 12training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, 13while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. 14He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.
The Art of Waiting
“and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly.” (v. 12b)
I got a haircut before Thanksgiving. I was one among many, and I had to wait until my hairdresser had time to take me. She was working with a woman who was having her hair colored in a multi-step process. The woman had a child with her. He looked like he was about five years old and he was playing on a device of some sort, unaware of or unconcerned by the time that was passing while his mother was having her hair done. In some ways, it was a good thing. He was occupied and wasn’t pestering his mother during the rather lengthy process of having her hair worked on. But in other ways it wasn’t such a good thing. He wasn’t waiting patiently. He was completely absorbed by the device in his hands. He was completely entertained and so, he was not learning patience. He was not learning to wait. Please don’t think that I’m being critical of the mother for entertaining her son with an electronic device while she had her hair done. I have done the same thing with my own children during tedious errands and I know that I’ll do it again. But seeing the little boy waiting, but not really waiting, reminded me that learning to wait is a skill that we all need to learn and, in some ways, at least in my life, it’s a dying skill.
You see, I’m a lot like that little boy. If I have waiting times, I tend to fill them right up. Turn on the TV. Listen to the radio, grab my laptop, or, better yet, pick up the phone, check my messages, scroll through Facebook, play a game. Why should I ever take a moment just to be still? Why should I take a moment between activities just to breathe, to look around me, to see the room or the place that I’m inhabiting, if there are people there with me, to notice them, not in a creepy, staring kind of way, but in a way that acknowledges their presence, in my own mind, in my own heart? Why shouldn’t I fill up that waiting, that in between time with imagined productivity or noise or entertainment? Because there is value in waiting, there is value in stillness, there is value in presence. And those things are dying skills. They could even be called dying arts.
In today’s scripture reading we find these words “…and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.” Self-controlled lives are lives that do not seek to fill every moment with fluff or work; lives that embrace sabbath and stillness. Upright lives are lives that are not filling up every moment with words and images of questionable quality. Godly lives are lives that are present to the world around us and to the presence of God in our lives.
I’m not going to lie, I’m not giving up my phone, my TV, my computer, or my radio. But I’m going to try not to turn to them so quickly. I’m going to try not to fill up all of my in between times. I’m going to try to take the waiting times that come to me and in them to seek moments of communion with God and with God’s creation. I’m going to try to experience every day as an Advent, a time when I remember and believe that in so many ways, God comes to me, to us, to the whole creation.
Let us pray. Help us, Lord, not to try to fill up all of the silences and the in between times. Teach us to wait, teach us to embrace stillness. Teach us to find you in as you come to us in our neighbors, in creation, in the waiting places. Amen.
Submitted by: Pastor Amanda Warner