Wait for the Lord

Welcome to Word for the Week, the series in which I:

share my experience of hearing God’s Word in Mass last weekend,
explore what I believe the Lord is calling me to do about that Word, and
ask how this Word might impact your life, as well.

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It's been a while since I've written an entry. Probably, it's been since before my father-in-law passed away. And then we lost four other members of our family/friends. Five losses in five weeks.

And here we are, in Advent. The season of waiting. I'm waiting to process all of this loss. I'm waiting to find a new semblance of normal.

On the first Sunday of Advent, I found myself in Ohio. The word that stood out was from the first reading, from the Book of Isaiah, "...wait for him."

Over the course of this week, the wait has felt long. In particular, I've been waiting to see how current ministry endeavors will bear fruit. And more pressingly, I've been waiting for God to make a way in my communication with David.

We have both been through many changes in the past year, and our marriage seems to be bearing the weight of much transition.

As I write this entry, I'm looking back to the passages leading up to this Word for the Week:

Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, with the mountains quaking before you, while you wrought awesome deeds we could not hope for, such as they had not heard of from of old. No ear has ever heard, no eye ever seen, any God but you doing such deeds for those who wait for him.

And although it's from a different liturgical season, I'm remembering the Gospel story when Jesus sent his disciples to prepare the Upper Room for the Last Supper.

He gave them such specific instructions. He told them where to find a donkey for him to ride into Jerusalem, who to meet with along the way, and every bit of it brought the ancient prophesies to fulfillment.

Maybe in our lives we are praying, like the scripture from Isaiah, "Oh...that you would come down." And yet, Jesus comes to us in the fullness of time (Galatians 4:4).

The details were not outside of God's Providence on the day of Christ's birth, nor during his Passion. And neither are the details of our lives separate from the will of God for us.

I'll end with a quote I shared at my Ohio concert last week. I hope you find comfort in these words, as I have, in this Season of Waiting:

"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." -Henri Nouwen

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