Waiting Is Presence

“Wait for the Lord and keep his way.” – Psalm 37:34

The interesting thing about having most of my planner become obsolete is realizing how much stock I put in it. It’s good to plan, but it’s easy to expend a great deal of mental and emotional energy upon a fictitious future that doesn’t even exist. We worry about things that haven’t actually come to pass. We hope in circumstantial possibilities more than we hope in God himself. The truth is, the only reality that I live in is now; my plans and the future in which they exist is not real. And nothing has shown us that more than this pandemic, which has ripped from us the future that all of us planned for.

It’s easy to think of waiting as passive. We are at the mercy of the virus; all we can do is wait. But Nouwen points out that nearly always in Scripture, those who are waiting do so actively. We see that here in Psalm 37, which is full of active injunctions: “delight,” “commit,” “be still,” “trust,” “turn away,” “do good.” Because we have God’s promises, because we know the seed has already been planted, we can wait actively. Nouwen writes, “Active waiting means to be present fully to the moment, in the conviction that something is happening. A waiting person is a patient person. The word ‘patience’ means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us. Impatient people are always expecting the real thing to happen somewhere else and therefore want to go elsewhere. The moment is empty. But patient people dare to stay where they are. Patient living means to live actively in the present and wait there.”

Waiting means being actively present to the moment we’re in, the people around us, the opportunity before us. It means learning to discern the presence and movement of God right where we are. It means untangling ourselves from living in the future so we don’t miss what God has for us now. C. S. Lewis writes in The Screwtape Letters, “There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human's mind against the Enemy. He wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them.”

God does not promise me grace for tomorrow, or for next month or next year. He promises it for the reality I live in right now. To wait is to be attentive with patient expectation. To keep our ways, in faith that God is present and working right where we are.