Patient Waiting

These dear daffodils are faithfully pushing up through the frozen ground of our front yard as they do every year about this time. I'm so thankful, for they give nod to the warmer, brighter season forthcoming, the one I think we're all longing for at this point. I love remembering that while everything has seemed still and cold and dead since November, these little bulbs have been actively, secretly growing up and out. It reminds me of one of my most favorite passages by Henri Nouwen. I'll share here:

"Active waiting means to be present fully to the moment, in the conviction that something is happening where you are and that you want to be present to it. A waiting person is someone who is present to the moment, who believes that this moment is the moment.

A waiting person is a patient person. The word patience means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us. Impatient people are always expecting the real thing to happen somewhere else and therefore want to go elsewhere. The moment is empty. But patient people dare to stay where they are. Patient living means to live actively in the present and wait there. Waiting, then, is not passive. It involves nurturing the moment, as a mother nurtures the child that is growing in her." / excerpt from Henri Nouwen in Watch for the Light

I pray, friends, that we will learn to be a patient, willing-to-wait people. That we would believe that this moment is the moment (for are we promised another?). That we would be a people who dare to believe---in times when our lives don't appear to be very alive nor our hopes realized---that something hidden and good is taking root beneath the surface. Lord, help us wait well. Make us patient and willing and alert to the moments you have given us. And help us to believe that what is hidden will manifest itself to us right on time.