Waiting for God. Oh?

I don’t like to wait. Check-out lines at food markets, red lights at intersections… Most of us are impatient for Something To Happen. Scripture to be read on the upcoming weekend talks about “the Day of the Lord” when history as we know it will be complete and we’ll see God face to face. Please remember that these are HUMAN expressions uttered in a specific context, and give us a glimpse only off what God’s up to at that time.

Our Old Testament encounter is with the prophet AMOS 5:18-24. He tells the People of the Northern Kingdom (Israel) that their worship traditions don’t matter nearly as much as their ethical conduct does. These are strong words by which he stresses God’s anger at the “proper” worship and the neglect of justice and righteousness. Get your act together before wishing it all to end! “Is not the day of the Lord darkness, not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?”

The Day of the Lord didn’t come then, but Paul thinks that it’ll happen during his lifetime (I THESSALONIANS 4:13-18. In the meantime, says he, act courteously to each other and encourage each other even about death. These folks evidently didn’t sell their belongings and gather on the mountain-top to await Christ; they carried on with their daily work and relationships, moving from crisis to crisis. Our physical death doesn’t yield a hopeless ending; it is but a doorway to Life as it should be, Life as God has planned it from the first.

Everyone wants to know what Heaven/the Kingdom of God will be like. Jesus tried to paint pictures in earthly words to approximate the indescribable. MATTHEW 25:1-13 is one of these teaching parables: 5 wise maidens who made provision for a delay, and 5 who did not. The bridegroom is arriving when you least expect it: the Day of the Lord will dawn in a surprising revelation. The message is about keeping ready and waiting in a meaningful pose. As the old Welsh preacher once asked his flock, “Which would you rather do? Keep awake with the wise maidens, or sleep with the foolish ones?”

WAITING FOR GODOT is a two-person play featuring Vladimir and Estragon: they live through their life-crises and shared experiences while waiting for Godot to show up. He never does, but life continues. Will he eventually come? Or has he already, several times? “Where have you seen God at work?”