Patient waiting

I look over the texts of this day and the evening Psalm is the one that grabs me today.  Psalm 40 begins like this:

 ¹   I waited patiently for the LORD;
          he inclined to me and heard my cry.
²   He drew me up from the desolate pit,
          out of the miry bog,
     and set my feet upon a rock,
          making my steps secure.
³   He put a new song in my mouth,
          a song of praise to our God.
     Many will see and fear,
          and put their trust in the LORD.

 

"I waited patiently for the Lord."  I only wish that were true.  So often my waiting - for healing, for peace, for guidance is anything but patient.  However as I get older, I at least wait with the confidence that God is here, "inclining" to me and listening for my cry.  Listening for the cry of all of us.  One of my favorite verses in the Bible is from the book of Exodus when the writer tells us that God heard the people - the enslaved people - "Groaning."  I like and trust this idea of a listening God.

So on this first Monday of the first week of Advent maybe the awareness  to start this season with is this:  God is LISTENING.  God is present and inclining Godself to me.  And then there is the obvious question - are you - am I - speaking, expressing myself, praying?

True confession - it is easier to write about praying, to talk about praying, to read about praying - than to pray.  To sit in the silence - perhaps with my journal - and open myself to the reality of God's loving presence. To sit and wait long enough to uncover the places within my life, my soul, our world in which we are acquainted with the desolate pit and the miry bog.  

In our lives we live with both joy and sorrow, abundance and poverty , consolation and desolation. Gratitude is a wonderful practice for everyone, AND so is getting in touch with the places of sorrow, poverty and desolation that we also carry.  It is the awareness of darkness for which we need the light during this season.

So, my intention for this time is to be a woman of prayer for the one who is waiting patiently.

Here is such a prayer by Walter Brueggemann

“Advent Prayer
In our secret yearnings
we wait for your coming,
and in our grinding despair
we doubt that you will.
And in this privileged place
we are surrounded by witnesses who yearn more than do we
and by those who despair more deeply than do we.
Look upon your church and its pastors
in this season of hope
which runs so quickly to fatigue
and in this season of yearning
which becomes so easily quarrelsome.
Give us the grace and the impatience
to wait for your coming to the bottom of our toes,
to the edges of our fingertips.
We do not want our several worlds to end.
Come in your power
and come in your weakness
in any case
and make all things new.
Amen.”