Maybe It Is the Waiting.

I’ve often pondered that familiar line in the second chapter of John’s Gospel that says, “You have kept the good wine until now.” 

And I’ve often wondered why the good wine is kept until the end.

Lord, don’t You know they are waiting for it?  Don’t You know that they are longing for more?

You know. 
But still, You ask us to wait. 

You teach us to wait. 

You call us into the waiting.

Perhaps You make us wait because, from the very first moment of our existence, we have failed to wait. We have grasped before we received. We took before we were capable of giving. 

We have always refused to wait.

But since our first refusal to wait, You, like a Good Father, have been teaching us how to wait. And so begins the very history of our salvation. 

Slow and steady is the journey out of Egypt. 

Slow, dry, and empty is the journey toward the Promised Land.

Prophets, judges, and exiles. Each of them teaching us one thing: to wait.

The waiting feels like agony. But maybe it is the waiting that will save us after all? 

Maybe it is in the waiting that we learn how to let go, how to carry less, how to slow down. Maybe it is the waiting that refines our taste, that reminds us of the beauty of simplicity, that teaches our hearts to be quiet. 

Maybe it is the waiting that calls us back to the hand of our Creator. That lowers us to the dust of the earth.  That creates space for the Spirit to breathe life into us once again, just as He did at first.  

Maybe it is the waiting that makes us long for Him again. That prevents us from the age-old grasp. That awakens our distant memory of the very first Garden.

Maybe it is the waiting that teaches us to dream again. That recalls beauty and truth from deep places within our hearts. That reminds us who we are and what we are made for.

Maybe it is the waiting that makes us holy. That pushes our prideful hearts to their knees. Stripping us of what we thought we knew. Freeing us from desires we thought were from Him.

Maybe it is the waiting that frees me from my need to control and teaches me real surrender. Maybe it is in the waiting that I learn to live day by day. 

Maybe it is in the waiting that I can commune with You. Maybe it is there that the table is set—with candles lit, bread abundant, and sweet red wine. And maybe it is there that You seek to dine with me, precisely in the middle of it all.

Simone Weil writes, “The most precious goods must not be searched for; they must be waited for.”

Maybe it really is the waiting—this thing I have resented all my life—that is actually changing my heart. Because maybe, in every fervent, desperate, teary prayer that I have prayed in times of waiting, I have come to know that He is actually there. 

Maybe this life is really just wrapped up in waiting—living in the reality of His presence and provision. All the while knowing that eye has not yet seen, nor ear heard, the Promise that is up ahead.

Wait with me. He is hidden, but He is here.