Waiting with Hope

 

On Sunday morning, the "hope" Sunday of Advent,  I spoke about the "watching and waiting" character of the season. Yesterday I visited an elderly member who is dying and whose wonderful daughters are keeping a practical vigil with her as the end draws near. A few days ago I took this person communion and she reminisced about a number of places where she had received the sacrament. Yesterday she was much weaker but we read a psalm and prayed. At the end I said "God be with you" and she responded "and with you." I teased her about being a closet Anglican and, eyes closed, she cracked that she covers all the bases.

 

Then I received these thoughts on waiting in the daily Sound Bites email.

 

Waiting is open-ended.  Open-ended waiting is hard for us because we tend to wait for something very concrete, for something that we wish to have.  Much of our waiting is filled with wishes: "I wish that I would have a job.  I wish that the weather would be better.  I wish that the pain would go." 

 

We are full of wishes, and our waiting easily gets entangled in those wishes.  For this reason, a lot of our waiting is not open-ended. Instead, our waiting is a way of controlling the future.  We want the future to go in a very specific direction, and if this does not happen we are disappointed and can even slip into despair.  That is why we have such a hard time waiting; we want to do the things that will make the desired events take place.  Here we can see how wishes tend to be connected with fears.

 

But Zechariah, Elizabeth, and Mary were not filled with wishes.  They were filled with hope.  Hope is something very different.  Hope is trusting that something will be fulfilled, but fulfilled according to the promises and not just according to our wishes.  Therefore, hope is always open-ended. 

 

-- Henri J. M. Nouwen in "A Spirituality of Waiting"