Recently a good friend and I were sharing with each other how much we appreciate our brand new iPhones. How great the camera is, how much memory they have and most importantly, especially with the addition of AI, how fast they are.
Our conversation then turned to reflecting on how much our phones have changed not only our lives but the entire world. I then confessed that I am acutely aware that the digital world has created in me an expectation that I should get everything instantaneously. Or to put it another way, it has clearly diminished my capacity for waiting.
That is a shame.
“What has happened to our ability to dwell in unknowing, to live inside a question and coexist with the tensions of uncertainty? Where is our willingness to incubate pain and let it birth something new? What has happened to patient unfolding, to endurance? These things are what form the ground of waiting. And if you look carefully, you’ll see that they’re also the seedbed of creativity and growth—what allows us to do the daring and to break through to newness,” offers Sue Monk Kidd in her book “When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions”.
In my own experience, if I can lift myself out of the stranglehold of impatience or need for immediate gratification long enough to take a deep breath I begin to appreciate the possibilities of the moment. As author Joyce Meyer writes, “Patience is not simply the ability to wait – it’s how we behave while we’re waiting.”
A spiritual director once asked me, “What are you waiting for?” Certainly a simple enough question, but it was also clear she was pushing for more. As I concluded my list she asked, “And what have you learned in the waiting?” I have subsequently borrowed that question multiple times and asked it of soul searchers to organizational leaders.
What are you waiting for?
A particularly good question to ponder during the season of Advent…
“But those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”— Isaiah 40:31
BP