In waiting

I knew it, even before I got to the coffee pot this morning. I felt it, even before I could put the nametag “homesick” on it. I found myself reciting lines of Christina Rossetti, Grace Knoll Croll, Erendis Nasard, the Psalmist. And they all sounded very mournful. “Oh, that I had wings of a dove…”

It followed me to work—this walking-the-edge-of-a-knife tension that signifies one of those days when you feel every moment, afraid that the atoms holding you together might give way before you can get home, and you will melt into a puddle of tears and random bits of matter at your feet (which will subsequently cease to be feet, since they will melt too), and feel that you are a Thing which has properly lost all of its Property-ness. And you know, in theory, that you are young and strong and happy and that only makes it worse because none of these facts have communicated themselves to your hands or feet or brain yet. In Girl, we say: chocolate and crying (no cure, but a treatment, at least). In Boy…I don’t speak Boy, but I have a feeling there is no equivalent.

But I reminded myself of a devotional I read recently, which included this sentence: “My desires become material for sacrifice.” I was thankful for this, because it meant that I have something concrete to offer up to God. Instead of just saying, in general, “Yes, Lord, I want to take up my cross and follow you, take my whole life,” I could say specifically, “Look, Lord—I have this pain; this love; this desire for a good thing: I put this on my altar, right now, specifically, because I want to be yours.” And so the pain becomes a reminder of my decision to follow Christ, of His purchase of my holiness, becomes something I have which I can give as an action of love; a reminder of joy.

I wrote Isaiah 40:31 on the board for my first lesson, and we talked our way through the various words. “Tell me what this makes you think of,” I said. “Are you ever tired?” Eliseo, my only young student for the class, shrugged. “I’m in waiting,” he said.

I tried to explain to him that we don’t say that in English. “This is very poetic, has the sense of waiting, expecting, depending on God, seeking His will,” I said. I looked later in the Italian, which says, “hope in.”

We then went on to talk about the use of “shall” as a promise (or a threat, but I don’t think so in this case). It reminded me of something I read, speaking of holding God to His promises. That’s faith, isn’t it? Taking God at His word.

Someone who felt things even more than I do, and who actually had reason to feel things, believed this: “This I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in Him.’ The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.”

I did remember one way in which we use “in waiting” in English: when we consider something only a matter of time (do you know, I miss the word “expect” in Italian—it only has “wait,” which isn’t always the same), especially with royalty, or champions. “The princesses in waiting,” I saw once as a title for the girlfriends of the Royal Highnesses. I too, am expecting to be royal, but I don't have to anxiously await approval--I already have the promise.

Our citizenship is in heaven, from which we eagerly await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly bodies to be like His glorious body, by the power that enables Him even to subject all things to Himself.

Lord, I will be quiet and wait—not tapping my toes, but firm in the knowledge that you have everything taken care of, knowing that I too will rise up with wings as eagles.