We’ve been doing a lot of waiting recently.
Waiting for lockdown to end. Waiting for schools to restart. Waiting for government announcements. Waiting for church to meet in person. Waiting for the next parcel to be delivered.
Waiting… to gain pleasure
Waiting is strange. It has so many forms. Some waiting is rather appealing. We eagerly anticipate the arrival of a good friend. We long for the start of our summer holidays. ‘I can’t wait’, we say. But, of course, we can. Indeed, we must, because most of the time we have no choice.
Except of course when we choose to wait. We do that too. We put off watching the last episode of a box set. We delay reading the final chapter of a book. The sense of anticipation so sweet that we create some extra waiting just to savour the prospect for a little bit longer.
… to avoid disappointment
Sometimes we postpone the moment of gratification to avoid the anticlimax that so often follows. The series is finished, the visit has happened, the holiday has ended, or the book has been completed. Something we loved so much and anticipated so eagerly is gone and all we are left with is a terrible sense of loss. But we move on. We find something else to look forward to. Something new to wait for.
According to the Bible, everyone and everything is waiting. Romans 8 tells us that creation itself ‘waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed’ (Rom. 8:19). Something is coming that is so life-changing, so earth-shattering that every part of the created order will be caught up in it. Christian believers are ‘looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.’ (2 Pet. 3:13)
Waiting well
Jesus repeatedly urged his followers to wait well, ‘like servants waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet’ ready to ‘immediately open the door for him.’ (Luke 12:36). This waiting is both similar and different to the kind we are more familiar with. Typically, we aren’t in control of this waiting. No one, Jesus says, not even the Son of Man, knows the timing of the end (Mark 13:32). But this waiting will never give way to anticlimax. Eternity isn’t like that. We wait for something so good, so perfect, so excellent that not even the very best things we have ever known will come close to it. Moreover, this good thing is a person. We wait for the blessed hope – the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ (Titus 2:13). In Him there will be no anticlimax. No waning of delight.
Pointing to the End
How might all this inform our conversations and our pastoral care? Notice, first of all, that in times of suffering, the Bible often directs us toward the End. Daniel does it in the face of the exile in Babylon. Revelation does it during the persecution of the early church. And if the inspired writers of the Bible thought that in suffering it was wise to look to the End and to anticipate the struggles before we get there, then we should do so too.
Expanding our perspective is wise. Paul writes of the way ‘our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all’ (2 Cor. 4:17). These ‘light and momentary troubles’ actually seem to have included an anticipation of imminent death (2 Cor. 1:8). But the glory beyond puts even that in its proper place. In Luke 12 Jesus warns people not to ‘be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more’ Instead he would have us fear the one who, ‘after your body has been killed, has authority to throw you into hell’ (Luke 12: 4-5). That’s a pretty counter-cultural form of anxiety management!
Well worth it
Having something to look forward to changes things. We all know that. And this Christian waiting changes things most of all. By faith we know that we are not waiting in vain. By faith we wait for the Lord of Glory in whom there is no anticlimax and no disappointment. In the conversations we have we must find ways to talk of the End and to anticipate glory. For if we do, then all the waiting we are doing at the moment may serve to teach us how to wait well for still better things. And if so, then it may achieve a purpose more precious than we can imagine. It will, in fact, have been well worth the wait.
