Waiting

Snow time is waiting time at the farm. There are always lots of little make-work jobs to fill out the hours with during snow season, but as each day passes the desire to be doing the big things that lead one into spring grows. Re-building dikes, moving the pruner over and servicing it, flagging the areas of the fields to be mowed, these are all big jobs that I prefer to see done before winter begins to break in March.

Waiting seems to be a fairly central feature of my Christian faith. Before Jesus we were waiting for the coming of the messiah and since he left we are waiting for his return. My experience is that waiting is a nice way of describing the act of procrastination.

I often find myself waiting for Sunday so that I can relax into a spiritual moment, I can be counted on, at least monthly, to suffer irritation while waiting for my girls to do things that are their jobs rather than letting go of my frustration and just doing them myself, I have been waiting for over twenty-five years to win the lottery. On the latter, I think that if I'd taken to throwing a hundred bucks a week into a savings account way back when, I would probably have the equivalent of a lottery win in my account. Oh well, I am human, do procrastinate and prefer to think of doing that as meaningful waiting.

I wonder what the world would be like if we Christians gave up waiting for God to answer our prayers and started to take daily responsibility for all of those things that we ask for? We' probably stop being Christians and become Christ's.