Worth Waiting for? – Reverend David Sargent

Worth Waiting For?

I’m really not one for getting all irate about Christmas starting in late October. Our local businesses need all the trade and support they can get, not only because the continuing anxiety about Covid, but also with the ever increasing shift toward online shopping. However, have we lost something of the art of waiting? The weeks leading up to Christmas ask us not to rush headlong into the celebration, but to experience the moment itself, the not yet, the waiting time of Advent. Some people are better at waiting than others. Maybe it gets easier as we get older and oldfashioned virtue of delayed gratification becomes a quality we are forced to accept, rather than intentionally choose. When we can’t move as fast as we used to, and can’t squeeze so much frenetic activity into an hour, we might just discover we didn’t need to anyway! Waiting is at the heart of the Christmas story; shepherds waiting through the long night; stargazers in distant lands charting the course of the heavenly bodies waiting for the alignment indicating new birth; Mary and Joseph waiting for Mary’s pregnancy to reach its full term and, ultimately, God, the eternal Word taking on flesh, waiting to be brought into the world. The best things really are worth waiting for! A well matured wine, a fine cheese, a skilfully aged steak, rising bread, fly fishing, a crafted garden, a well-practiced sports skill, the perfectly cooked dinner and … the list goes on. But what is it about the waiting itself that matters? I offer a few suggestions that might help a little to make the coming weeks an essential part of our Christmas celebrations, rather than just a necessarily busy time to get through. Instead of collapsing in a weary heap, too tired or fed-up with the whole thing to enjoy it when it does arrive, perhaps enjoying the wait and the anticipation will make the celebration itself even more special. 1. Waiting helps us notice and pay attention to the present moment. We easily rush on to the ‘next’ thing and never truly attend to the moment. 2. Waiting unmasks our preoccupation with ourselves. Our instant ‘have-it-now’ culture promotes an unhealthy culture of individualism. Waiting reminds us that we are not the centre of everything. 3. Waiting reminds us of those forced to wait though demanding situations; for an operation that should have happened months ago, for an asylum application that has not been attended to, for a loved one with terminal illness.

I am sure you will think of other possible benefits of waiting; each depends on our willingness to watch and wait, not passively, but actively, like waiting for a birth, a new life, some new hope for our world. Waiting – because it’s worth is.