Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, Yahweh
Why the dark before the dawn?

Few of us are very good at waiting..

We wait in a thousand ways…
We wait in an venue for travel that is often delayed.
We wait in a dentist’s office for our turn in the chair..
We wait in the queue for that gift to be paid…
We wait ..

And we wait for those transitions that are too slow in coming: the end of a job that is outworn, and the beginning of a new one that lies nearer to our passion. Perhaps we wait for something even more basic: we wait for health, the end of a prolonged illness. Or we wait for the good news that the child of a son, daughter or friend is born healthy and well.
We wait in a thousand ways, like we wait for the birth of a new world. Or perhaps we wait for the fulfilment of a promise made many years ago; we wait for a world of justice, peace, and light that seems so slow in coming.
It isn’t easy, because in our “now” culture of instant gratification, waiting is a lost art. Waiting has been lost as we have lost our sense of rhythm, and found a way to cheat seasons, battle with aging, and streamline nearly everything into rational patterns of efficiency. The only ones in touch with rhythm are those who have learned to pray, or those who live by the sea, or perhaps those, who still know rhythm in their bodies and women in the waiting for birth.

But if we have lost the ability to wait,
what do we do with hope?
For nearly four hundred years the Jews waited for the Messiah, but when he arrived, all but a few missed him.
They had learned to occupy their time so well, that they had lost the ability to perceive difference. They had their system rationalized down to the smallest detail; nothing escaped their notice.
Nothing…..
but in fact everything.

While we wait we live in between the times. It is a sacred, holy and vital thing when we wait in hope….

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