The waiting is the
hardest part
Every day you get one
more card
You take it on faith,
you take it to the heart
The waiting is the
hardest part
-Tom Petty
For the Israelites at the foot of Mt. Sinai, the waiting
really is the hardest part. Forty days
after Moses ascended into a dense cloud atop the mountain, he has yet to return. Tired of waiting and fearing the worst, they
panic. In the mounting fear, terrified
of being abandoned by both God and God’s chosen leader, they turn to Aaron and
plead with him to build them a golden calf to stand in Moses’ place. Aaron, deep in the throes of his own anxiety,
obliges. The rest is history.
But we should not be overly critical of the Israelites. It is, indeed, extraordinarily difficult to
wait out our seasons of suffering and discontent. When we descend into our own dark nights of
the soul, we, too, are tempted to push away the pain with forms of instant
gratification. We anaesthetize ourselves
with all sorts of numbing agents, or settle for other easy but ultimately
inadequate forms of short term relief.
We forget—or cannot bear— the truth of Talmud’s wisdom: “According to
the labor, so is the reward.” As writer
Sue Monk Kidd notes in her beautiful book, When
the Heart Waits, real spiritual growth demands patience. If we wish to emerge like butterflies, we
must learn to successfully endure the long, uncertain darkness of the cocoon.
This week, consider: where do you find the kind of courage
that might sustain you in life’s seasons of darkness and doubt? How can community help you to grow through
such times?
Meanwhile, here’s a relevant section of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s
poem, “I am Waiting”:
I
am waiting
to
get some intimations
of
immortality
by
recollecting my early childhood
and
I am waiting
for
the green mornings to come again
youth’s
dumb green fields come back again
and
I am waiting
for
some strains of unpremeditated art
to
shake my typewriter
and
I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long careless rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian
Urn
to catch each other up at last
and embrace
and I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder
