The Waiting Game

Matthew 25:1-13

Waiting rooms are awful.

Unfortunately, we had the experience of a waiting room recently as we met our daughter and son in an ER waiting room in Marietta, Georgia. Our daughter was not well and all options had run their course but a trip to the ER to get her some medicine and fluids. When my wife and I arrived, it was 1100 PM. The waiting room was full of “interesting people” at 1100 PM. Marietta is near enough to Atlanta to carry the urban vibe in its context. At 1100 PM, that vibe rotated over into strange. There were a fair number of folks who had no other option for basic medical care than the ER, so there was a smattering of families with small children who just needed a doctor. But there were other denizens who looked like the ER was just a hopping place to be on a Tuesday night. Or their hopping place turned on them, sending them to the ER. As we headed past midnight with no faint glimmer that our daughter was near to getting whatever treatment she might get, having seen the doctor three hours earlier, we decided to punt. We could get fluids on our own. The waiting room was making another turn toward “interesting” of the sort that looked a bit disturbing. So, we left.

No one likes to wait. 

But we do a lot of waiting. We wait for an appointment. We wait for a table. We wait for the car to get fixed. We wait for the children to come home. We wait for a report. We wait for our show to come on. We wait for the light to change. 

Impatience becomes second nature.

We can understand the five maidens who got tired of waiting. My goodness--its the middle of the night, for crying out loud! Who gets married at 300 AM? 

Tell the truth--had you been in this wedding party, would you have waited patiently and faithfully for the guest of honor to show up? I thought so.

As Jesus tells the parable, he has no illusions about his audience (even though they may well have tried to fool themselves that would not be those impatient ladies). He knows that if God does not respond quickly and firmly in our favor, we will tend to waver in our faithfulness. We want immediate benefits, and we want immediate answers. 

But faith is a waiting game.

God is free.

God works on God’s own timetable.

God waits for us, then acts. 

There is a wonderful story of a monk that illustrates this problem of faith. There was a holy man, living in the desert. Pilgrims would make their way from the city into the desert to glean his wisdom. One day, a young man went into the desert. Life was confused. So many problems pounded at him from so many directions, he could not figure out what he was supposed to do. He was lost. He was at his wit’s end. He found the holy man and sat before him. He poured out all of his confusion, angst, and turmoil to the holy man. He stopped to draw a breath and hear the holy man’s counsel. The holy man just sat there, smiling at him. The young man felt himself growing more and more impatient. Why wouldn’t the old man say anything? Why wouldn’t he help? This was infuriating! But the holy man continued to sit and smile at the young man. Finally, after hours of waiting, the young man threw up his hands and prepared to storm off. “And there is your trouble,” said the holy man. He sat and smiled again. 

So, faith, then, is sitting. It is, at times, doing nothing at all, but waiting. God will be God. God’s love will find a way. It will lead us into something meaningful, powerful, and profound. 

But to get there, there may well be times when we have to follow the Zen adage--”Don’t just do something, SIT THERE!”

Then we will have the wisdom of wise maidens.