“After Jesus is dead his followers do not realize that they are waiting. After all, what else is there to wait for? Everything is over. Perhaps they feel that they are waiting for their own pain to diminish, their own sense of loss and bereavement to become bearable. Only time can do that, but the leaden hours go so slowly to the recently bereaved. Jesus’ followers are sharing that experience with all who have lost loved ones…
Waiting is one of the most difficult tasks we have to face, because it makes us feel so helpless. In most areas of our lives, we are used to being able to make decisions and choices that will make things happen for us. Our day-to-day lives are so full of things to be done, that we imagine it would be lovely to have a period of waiting, where things are taken out of our hands and there is nothing we can do.
But when we are actually presented with a situation where the only thing we can do is wait, we find it intensely difficult. When we or someone we love is ill, there is a lot of waiting – in hospital rooms, waiting for test results, waiting to see if treatment works. This kind of waiting is almost unbearable, because all our choice is taken away. We cannot make things happen by our energy or force of will. This painful waiting is a hard lesson in reality. Facing what cannot be changed is part of the world. Sometimes we wriggle or negotiate things round the way we want them to be, and then to stand and wait is indeed the only service we can give. It is a service to reality and so to ourselves.”
Jane Williams
Chorlton Unitarians 