WAITING is a thrilling event in the life of many people: we do not know for sure whether what we are hoping for will really come to us, and often we do not know exactly when it will come. And how will it look like? Is it really as we thought it to be? Or is it something else? Are we going to be disappointed?
Before, women who were pregnant were in the same situation. Now -unluckily- it is usually the same for a lot of people, but they cannot suppress the urge to limit the uncertainty: the woman wants to know whether the child will be a boy or a girl, whether it has no serious shortcomings and preferably also on what date and in what house it will be born. And like it is at the beginning of our life also to wait for the moment of death. Thus it will be also at the end of our life: the waiting for the moment of death is very difficult for many, the life after, more than the dying. And also at that moment is the urge very strong.
Waiting is characterized by ambiguity. On the one hand is waiting something hopeful, waiting is carried over by the desire for what is coming. But on the other hand it is characterized by something that is lacking: something or somebody we are waiting for is not yet there. There is something else that is lacking: a presence of that person is much desired.
I believe that for us Christians is waiting the most essential word in the Christian tradition. All kind of images are being used: the coming back of the Son of Man, the coming of the Kingdom of God. We are still waiting for it, it is not yet there, or at least it is not yet perfect. God is perhaps the ultimate one who is coming: not He who is, but He who is coming. as a thief in the night. That would mean that a life that is dedicated to God, like that of the religious, is essentially a waiting life. It is like a life "in a shelter." Waiting for God, like the mystique Simone Weil has said: is not until we will find Him but until He wants us to be found by Him.
Waiting requires vigilance and susceptibility, a being "on the watch." This has to do also with the fact that waiting gives us a feeling of powerlessness. We usually don’t have a grip on the time of waiting. We are subjected to the power or even the will of others or of an anonymous power. Call it fate.
A lot of things in life require patience. Then it is not anymore a loss of time but a hopeful looking forward on what is coming, even if we don’t know exactly what that coming entails. The waiting can give us a space in our existence.
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