I suppose there are few things more difficult for most of us than waiting. Especially in our congregation filled with get-it-done people, we have a hard time when we have to wait – waiting in the check-out line in the grocery store, waiting for the slow-moving traffic, waiting at the doctor’s office, or waiting until Christmastide (the Twelve Days of Christmas) to sing Christmas carols instead of rushing to them immediately following Thanksgiving. Advent is about waiting for Christ and the church’s job is to train us in the skills of waiting.

I find myself immensely grateful for the waiting skills you’ve given me. I needed them recently when I spent most of a day in the emergency room of one of our local hospitals. I’ve waited with many of you in the same emergency “waiting room” but this was my first time as a patient. They hooked me up to all sorts of tubes and computers, drew blood, drew blood again, and asked me a lot of questions “Have you had heart problems before?” “Describe your shortness of breath.” And told me “Your blood pressure is slightly elevated,” (Doggone right it is elevated; I have two needles in me and you’re drawing blood, you’re pulling the hair off of my chest where you’re putting sticky things connected to wires, you’re pressing and gouging my stomach and legs, people are everywhere, and lights and buzzers and beepers are going off!). At the end of the long day, I was released to see my general practitioner and cardiologist, and was told I did not have any heart damage but I did need to get my blood pressure under control.

Truth be told, my experience in the emergency room was not terribly difficult. At least I knew something was being done. My blood was being analyzed, my heart was being monitored, and the people caring for me were attentive and kind. Yes, it took most of the day, but that was a small price to pay for analysis and answers and action. It was the aftermath that I wasn’t prepared for, and it was in the aftermath when the skills of waiting made a difference.

When I got home I knew that I had health-work in front of me and more doctors to see and strategies to follow. I knew all of that. But I didn’t expect being afraid and depressed about it all; I didn’t expect to have such fear of what I didn’t know. And there was not one thing I could do in the short-term but wait.

However if there is one skill I’ve learned with you it is that we do not wait alone. Besides, here I was worrying over my body and it hit me, it’s not my body; I am part of the body of Christ. So I practiced what I’ve preached, letting more of you know what was going on, and you joined in helping me wait, re-membering my body within the larger body of Christ. Joe R. has listened and listened to my fears while Dr. Bob and Joe B. patiently explained what the medicine I’m on does and its side-effects. Phil and Darren have talked to me about their own high blood pressure and Brenda S. brought me a treat of blueberries and non-fat yogurt. Archie served heart-healthy bean soup at the caroling party and has been giving me helpful advice and Barbara and Susan are broadening the conversation already underway about how we can eat together locally grown and healthy meals and do so more often. Many of you are organizing walking groups so we can encourage one another and hold one another accountable.

Bob and Teri reminded me that, like so many of us, I’m much better at helping others than I am in being receptive to help. They reminded me that part of being a Christian in the body of Christ means being sick like a Christian; we learn to be inter-dependent. In other words, let the rest of the body minister to me as I learn to practice patient waiting (hence, to be a “patient”).

When I say that waiting is a skill and a practice I mean that it is more than a “belief.” While my “belief” that God was with me in the waiting is something I don’t doubt, it was when we put it to practice by waiting together that my belief moved from abstraction to in-the-flesh reality. My waiting and fear became caught up in something bigger than my individual self and became not only bearable but yet one more time where grace got loose among us.

There is a wonderfully touching scene at the end of Wendell Berry’s little novel Andy Catlett: Early Travels, in which nine-year-old Andy goes into the back of the small town general store looking for his grandfather. It is the end of 1943 on a cold winter day; the shelves of the store are bare due to the owner being away in the war, and in the back room, with a good fire going in the stove, friends, including Andy’s grandfather, are gathered playing rummy. Tacked up on the wall were the players’ names with their scores listed but never totaled, as if they were just letting the numbers accumulate until the war ended. Andy realizes that the men were there waiting. Several of the men had sons and relatives in the war; one had already lost a nephew, while others waited on news. And with them there was “Jayber Crow, whose calling seems to have been to wait with the others. They were suffering and enduring and waiting, waiting together . . .”

I know that so many of you have suffered and endured and waited through more than an emergency room scare, yet you patiently waited with me and I am grateful. Like Jayber Crow, our calling seems to be to wait with one another.

Let’s be careful out there,

Kyle