Waiting...

The pastor at Koinonia Mennonite Church over in Chandler based his Advent sermon this morning on waiting. He admitted that he was not very good at waiting in line for anything -- five minutes being about his limit.

 I had to think about that...

I've spent a great deal of my life waiting. I can remember as a child anxiously awaiting becoming a grown-up. Grown-ups had all the answers. They knew things.

What a disillusion when the time came! To realize that technically I was a grown-up, but I still didn't have all the answers and there was so much I didn't know! I'm still waiting on that one.

So much of our lives is spent waiting. For small things -- for the guy at the part store to find the new part that will match the one I've brought in from the combine; for the line at the grocery store to finally reach the register; or for the stop light to change to green. And for the big things -- the birth of a baby; the end of a surgery and the arrival of the surgeon in the waiting room; or the transition of a loved one at the end of their life.

Sometimes the waiting ends in disappointment, sometimes it ends in joy and sometimes we wonder if that's all there is to it...

In some ways waiting is easier than it used to be. Can it be that I have become more patient? Or is it because I've usually got one of my electronic toys with me? I can play a game or check on Facebook on my iPhone or read the paper or my latest novel on my Kindle.

Waiting is also easier because time seems to fly by so much faster these days. It used to take forever for Christmas to arrive. Now it seems as though it was just a couple of months ago and here it is again. Our grandchildren were just babies and now the oldest is graduating from high school this spring.

Waiting.

Something to think about.

Something to ponder.