Waiting on God
Waiting on God can be a long wait. As a pastor I have often stepped into an ICU room and waited with loved ones for God to show up. Sometimes people congregate around the bed, listening for the death rattle, a signal that the end has finally arrived. But there is no particular routine that people follow when they wait on God. Waiting on God varies from one person to the next.
I remember waiting with the wife of one of my dear friends who lingered for weeks in the ICU. For over a year he had battled cancer, but the outcome was inevitable. Almost a month had passed since he slipped into a coma and now there was nothing to do but wait.
Their two young adult children came to the hospital every day, either before or after work. They, too, were waiting. The ICU room was not supposed to have more than two visitors at the same time, but the nurses and hospital personnel usually make an exception in these cases.
My friend’s breathing became more labored day after day. As I stood next to his bed I thought to myself that we would not have to wait much longer. His wife looked tired with dark circles under her glistening eyes. The tears come more frequently now than they did a week or two earlier, as if she knew the wait was almost over.
I took my dying friend’s hand and held it in both of my hands. The son and daughter gathered around me, perhaps hoping for some word of comfort, some word that would ease their sorrow. I released my friend’s hand and put my arms around his son and daughter. I knew of nothing else I could do, except wait with them.
There was nothing more anyone could do. The gifted medical healers had left the room. They did all that they knew how to do and now they, too, were waiting on God.
Why does God tarry? Why doesn’t God just come and end everyone’s suffering?
The son asked to speak to me, and we stepped outside the room for a moment. He told me that he had been truant from church far too long and planned to start coming back as soon as things were settled. Was he trying to bargain with God, to cajole God into showing up? I wondered.
When I went back into the room the wife glanced my way searching my face for some answer, some reason, why God hadn’t made his entrance. If only God would do something, anything, to make his presence known, but for whatever reason God seemingly stayed away.
We waited through the long afternoon and into the early evening. The family was exhausted. I left for a short time to visit others who were sick, but when I returned little had changed. The family continued to wait. Outside the ICU there was a waiting room, where friends of the family were waiting, too. They asked me how the family was coping, and if there was anything they could do.
Why did God keep everyone waiting? Why didn’t he just show up and put an end to the interminable waiting?
It seems that God has a habit of keeping people waiting, especially when life collapses around them. When life rolls merrily along, people seldom question the presence of God, but at the first sign of trouble, sometimes God can disappear.
A pastor friend of mine dropped by my office one afternoon with a deep sadness. For months I had noticed his heaviness of heart, his lack of joy, and had tried to reach out to him, but each time he had backed away. But this time it was different. We were not long into our conversation when he asked me if God was as remote in my life as God was in his. He felt as though God had deserted him, and he felt empty and alone.
For more than thirty years he had led churches, teaching people about God, caring for them in sickness and joy, burying their dead, baptizing their children and being present with them during both troubling and happy times, but now he felt that God had abandoned him. When my friend needed God in his life, God wasn’t there. He didn’t show up, or at least that’s the way it seemed to him.
I listened to my friend for a long time. I wanted him to know that I, too, shared with him frustration with a God who so often seems inattentive or absent. Why is God so elusive? Why do we so often feel alone when our life comes apart?
Maybe the nature of God means that he has to parcel himself out, giving only enough divine presence so that we have an awareness of him but nothing more. More than that would be like looking directly into the sun. Consequently, God has to work around the edges of our lives, so to speak, in indirect and subtle ways, to reveal his presence.
Or maybe God intentionally withdraws himself from us the way a parent stands back when her child is learning to walk. For the child to transition from crawling to walking requires the parent to move away. Naturally, there is a risk the child might fall, but failure and hurt are part of the growth process of becoming fully human. Perhaps God’s elusive nature is a means for us to come of age, to mature as responsible agents in order to fulfill our purpose as images of God in the world.
I don’t know why God seemingly becomes scarce when we need him. What I do know is that my friend is in good company. A refrain that occurs repeatedly in the Bible asks the question, “Where is God?” or “Why has God abandoned me?” exposing the hard truth that my friend’s sense of spiritual emptiness has been experienced by countless other men and women before him, men and women of faith who also waited on God to show up.
Psalm 88 is just one example of a person waiting on God. Here was a person of faith who pled with God over and over to show up. The beleaguered psalmist confesses no sin or recalcitrant behavior that deserves God’s punishment--God simply wasn’t there with him or so it seemed.
Surprisingly, the majority of psalms are not prayers of praise and thanksgiving, but are prayers of distress and cries of feeling abandoned by God. We often miss that because we tend to focus on the more hopeful and optimistic psalms like Psalm 23, everyone’s favorite. But don’t be fooled. The psalter provides plenty of soulful grist for all those who have felt forsaken by God.
And then there are prophets like Jeremiah and the unjustly plagued Job who also despaired because God didn’t show up. The disciples, too, could identify with the psalmist’s experience. Even in the presence of Jesus, they remained wishy-washy, unsure of God’s presence. At the first sign of trouble, when Jesus was arrested, they scattered to the winds, feeling that God had left them high and dry.
What are we to make of all this waiting on God? I listened as my pastor friend poured out his heart to me and told me how important his wife had been to him during his time of darkness. She stood by him and comforted him by listening to his words of pain and spiritual distress, without judgement or condemnation. My pastor friend’s sister wrote cards offering encouragement and prayers for him. Many of the members in the church knew of his spiritual valley and dropped by his office to extend their support and love. I listened as he shared with me all the different ways people in his congregation had reached out to him.
“Maybe your wait is over,” I said.
“What do you mean?” my friend replied.
“Well, it seems to me that God has been with you, maybe not in the way you expected or would have liked, but, just the same, I think God’s presence has been there for you all along. He’s been with you through the presence of all these wonderful people who have been there for you, sending you cards, encouraging you with their words and prayers—your wife, sister and your congregation—they have all been with you.
He looked at me for a long while in silence. Is it possible God chooses to come to us through the flesh and blood of other human beings, friends and family members waiting outside the ICU, a wife who comforts her struggling husband or a congregation who prays fervently for their troubled pastor?
Perhaps instead of waiting on God, God has been waiting on us—to come together as a community of faith, reaching out to those who suffer and feel forsaken--for wherever two or three are gathered together in his name . . . the wait is over.
