What to learn from this season of waiting: 12-6-18

Manhattan, Kan. -- Out of flat, disinterested skies, an occasional drizzle of rain and a few snow flakes found their way to my windshield earlier this week as I drove here to give a talk to a church.

The phenomenal autumn colors that graced the Midwest some weeks back have dissolved to winter-browns and seven or eight shades of beige on the land between Kansas City and here. I was, it seemed, being asked to think about winter's purpose, about death, about preparation, about waiting, which is what this Advent season is for Christians, a season of waiting and wondering.

Waiting is far from my most favorite thing to do. I think that I do not tolerate very well those times that require patience. To wait, it seems to me, is to misuse the gift of time.

For people like me who have that attitude, waiting becomes a necessary spiritual discipline, and one that needs much more attention than I usually am willing to give it.

And yet in many ways I have grown used to waiting. After my daughters were born, for instance, I had to wait to see what kind of people they would become. My patience has been rewarded enormously. I'm now having the same experience with grandchildren. And all of them -- children and grandchildren -- still are becoming, are on the journey, reaching no final state so far. So I continue to wait.

Even in matters of almost no lasting importance, I have learned to wait. I waited from the time I was less than a year old until I was past 70 to see my Chicago Cubs play in another World Series. The one before 2016 happened the year I was born, so my memory of it is a bit shaky.

Followers of Jesus have, so far, waited nearly 2,000 years for what they've understood would be his return. I've been part of that wait, though I confess that I rarely give much thought to the subject and, in the end, have no uncontested idea about what a Second Coming might look like or mean, exactly.

Still, I wait, but not inactively. That is, I try to imagine what I'm supposed to know and do to be a disciple of this Jesus, and although I may be getting much of it wrong, I try to act on what occurs to me.

So, yes, this wintry season -- even though it's not officially winter yet -- gives all of us a chance to wait, to learn (or re-learn) patience, to let die what needs to die in our lives and to prepare the soil for what should be growing next.

So let's resolve to wait out this cold season in that way. Perhaps if we do, the warming soil of spring will give us gifts.

(The photo here today I took just south of Manhattan, looking west.)

* * *

FEEDING THE CARAVAN PEOPLE

People of faith in Tijuana, Mexico, especially Catholics, are rising to the occasion and helping to feed and care for thousands of people in the so-called caravan of refugees seeking asylum in the U.S., this RNS story reports. Good for them. It's easy to dismiss these people as troublemakers and unworthy, but they are our fellow human beings and people of faith should always treat them that way.