The Beauty of the Waiting

I am impatient and stubborn. My best friend and I say that’s why we’re still friends because we refuse to give up on the other. Patience was one of those lessons I hated learning and God so loves teaching them to me. The most effective way and obvious way to learn this incredible gift is the most frustrating, waiting. We must sit and do nothing and wait for God to move.

I used to hate this so much, but now I’ve seen a certain beauty to this frustrating experience. I believe I’ve seen why God allows us to wait sometimes, and maybe it’s only meant to help me but it sure does help. We see in scripture that God talks a lot about working and resting. The Sabbath was created as a day of rest. We all may complain about having to work, but I think we all secretly love it.

We like doing something; we like feeling productive especially when it comes to serving the Lord. I know I spent most of my summer working at Catholic Youth Summer Camp ministering to high school and middle school kids. It was the most rewarding experience of my entire life. I was building up the Kingdom of God and I wanted to do it more, but God had other plans.

After the summer was over I didn’t really have a direction, and I think we all can relate to that in some way. When a project at work or school is done, another obstacle has been overcome, or maybe you were finally able to put the kids to bed. Hey that’s an accomplishment in itself I hear. But we live in a world that says we always have to be doing something. We don’t know how to take a break.

Life is full of this intricate balance and transition of work and rest, but I don’t think we take advantage of the rest. We all beg for a moment to breath, time to ourselves, or for everything to just stop. Except when that happens we complain to God that we don’t know what to do or we hate not doing something. Well yeah you just prayed for some time and now you say you don’t want it. I’d get annoyed. But our God is so loving and perfect I feel He just stares at us and says “Be patient my child”.

Well what I’ve found is that this period of waiting, of dryness, of uncertainty that is our rest. This is when we do what we say we’d always do if we had more time. This is when we pray more, read scripture, finish that book, or just sit in silence and experience the God of the Universe and finally let Him speak to you. The time of rest doesn’t mean nothing happens it just seems like God doesn’t tell us what to do. That’s when we pursue Him. God spends all of eternity pursuing us and He craves a response. He longs for a relationship with you.

We all are given this gift of rest where we decide what we want to do with it. This is when we can freely choose God not because He’s asking us or it’s a choice between right and wrong. Simply because we want to be with Him too. Now, I don’t know anyone who uses every period of waiting perfectly. I know I don’t, I abuse this gift from God daily. But I think it’s acknowledging that it is a gift that it opens a door to our souls. That all of a sudden instead of complaining to God we now have an awareness that we can turn to Him and see Him for who He truly is.

God is infinitely knowable so you will always find something if you did something a little different. And this period of waiting seems like as a good of a time as any to take advantage of that, so start that rosary, open your Bibles, say the Liturgy of the Hours, go to Adoration, or for once be silent for 20 minutes and truly and whole heartedly offer that time up to God to speak to you. We might be surprised how at peace we feel even if we don’t hear Him speak because if we lift our eyes to Him He may not say anything, but our souls find comfort in His presence. So we may not understand why we’re at peace, but maybe the why isn’t so important maybe it’s the experience of God that’s important. It’s like this I don’t know why God exists only that He does and He loves me and all of us very much. And maybe the simplest thing we can do is go to Mass maybe more often, but whenever you go listen to every word and how crazy it all sounds. And to decide when you say Amen do you believe it, and if not pray that God gives you the faith to believe it.

Jesus is in everything, when He is calling us, and when He is waiting for us to call out to Him. Use this time of rest for God wants to rest with you.