Tired of Waiting

I keep waiting for it to happen and waiting for it to happen and I guess, I'm tired of waiting.

If you're like me these words from Ted Mosby, the protagonist from How I Met Your Mother, ring true in so many different ways.

We are tired of waiting.

From a young age many of us have been told that the world is our oyster, that we could and can do anything, or that  God has the perfect plan for us.  We then have eagerly being waiting for that thing to occur - that time or feeling where everything will make sense or be justified.  It could be finding the dream job, or the future spouse, or simply not having to keep fighting to make life happen.

We want what we've been promised. And it's exhausting.

Hope is such an exhausting thing especially when we play the comparison game.  We see our our friends figuring out what they were 'made' to do and are somehow doing it. We watch as that that socially awkward person somehow found another who wants to spend the rest of their life with them. It doesn't make sense and it doesn't often seem fair to us.

In some way, this is an ache all of humanity understands.  We can see it when God chose a people, delivered them from the hand of an oppressor only to then beg God to make it as it was because the promised land wasn't there yet.  Then Jesus even speaks of it when He reminds us to think of how the birds and the fields are provided for - that worrying and comparing will get you no where.

So we are then invited into the present moment - to engage it fully. To pursue all the ways we can to make the most of the here and now.  Focused on the present moment with an eye to the future.   The trick lay in striving, not manipulating, and in doing so we realize that the future is rushing towards us.  A future that we could have never dreamt of.The scene where Ted finally articulates his exhaustion with waiting for his love ends with this dialogue with his former fiancé, Stella:

Stella: You know I once talked my way out of a speeding ticket?

Ted: Really?

Stella: I was heading upstate to my parents' doing like 90 on this country road and I got pulled over. So this cop, he gets out of his car and swaggers on over and says, "young lady, I've been waiting for you all day." So I looked up at him and said, "Sorry officer I got here as fast as I could."

Ted: For real?

Stella: No. It was a joke.

Stella: I know that you're tired of waiting. And you may have to wait a little while more, but she's on her way Ted. And she's getting here as fast as she can.

Can you wait?  Can I wait? Can we wait? Can we believe that a future beyond our imagination is rushing our way?  That love, that joy, that peace, that patience, that kindness, that goodness, that faithfulness, all get the last word?  I have no idea what the future will look like for you, or for me, or for us but that is what lay ahead. So can you be fully where you are now?  Maybe God is whispering to us all:

I know that you're tired of waiting. And you may have to wait a little while more, but it's on the way. And it's getting here as fast as it can.