Pentecost Sunday was nearly a week ago, but I still feel stuck in that room. Waiting. Asking this question: how did they survive the long, empty days between Jesus leaving and the Comforter coming?
How did they endure being lifted up by the joy of a promise believed only to drop again into the discouragement of yet another not yet?
And why the gap? Why did they have to wait at all?
We do know that the wait moved them to gather together. I imagine the promise was easier to believe when they could see the hope in one another’s faces. When they could pass around their Jesus stories, like a platter of bread and fish. Stories multiplied into hope. And faith.
And I imagine they worshipped. Sang and prayed.
Was this what it was all for? Was their worship the reason?
Did God wait, strain with holding himself back, because he wanted to hear their songs?
“Call to me,” he had once told them. “And I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know” (Jeremiah 33:3).
Call. My husband tells me this word suggests something organized, something formal. Something created. Like a song. Like a poem. Something more than careless words tossed at the sky.
Maybe you don’t sing songs. Maybe you don’t write poems. But maybe you journal. Maybe you sketch. Maybe you take photographs or bake bread for the neighbors. Maybe you orchestrate elaborate finger-painted messes with the three-year-olds at church and maybe, just maybe, that is your call? Your song? Your cry for more of God?
And maybe that is the point of it all. The point of waiting. The point of living. To add our call to the many others until a crescendo of sound and beauty and worship rises to heaven and All is unleashed.
Then, just as it was that Pentecost when God’s church was born, wind and fire reveal the great unknowns.
What have we all been waiting for? To hear the mysteries of God’s glory in a language we can comprehend.
Those unsearchable glories we never even knew to seek.
Great stuff Christie! Our pastor preached on the importance of waiting last Sunday, and it was really great stuff. We practiced waiting on the Lord and he really showed up. Sometimes it just takes a little time, and even in the waiting there is reshaping and relearning that takes place.
Thanks, Ed! Your comment prompted a slight (but significant) change in perspective for me. I tend to think of waiting as something required of me (which it often has been of late), but shouldn’t it also be something I intentionally practice? Something I invite into my life, the way your pastor did on Sunday?
Uh, I hear you. I remember reading (and rereading!!) the book called Waiting (by Ben Patterson, maybe?) when I was single. And wondering what the heck the purpose of making me wait SO LONG for marriage was (I mean, 34 for crying out loud!!). But then I ended up marrying Seth, who was 4 years younger. And that means I had to wait for him to do what God had for him and get us both in place…. So maybe he didn’t have to wait too long, and I had to wait way too long, and somehow it all worked out. But then I didn’t have to wait to get pregnant (but then had the world’s most difficult child, but that’s another story…). But really, think of all the waiting God does, and He waits on the stuff that is actually important–redemption of souls and reconciliation of people and making all things right and blah blah blah…
Hmm, maybe I should look for that book. Or, maybe not? 🙂 I try to make something beautiful out of the waiting, but, mostly, my response is just UGH, WHY SO LONG??
Wish we could commiserate in person, Danielle.