Like individuals, our world also experiences the challenge of waiting. We wait for peace to be restored, we wait for political decisions to be made that will promote justice and affirm the dignity of all members of the human family, we wait for environmental solutions to our climate challenges, we wait, we wait, we wait. But waiting is not the same as being passive. Rather just as in our personal lives, waiting can be active, transforming the waiting into opportunities for growth in virtue and solidarity. The following activities will help us realize how our growth in active waiting can bring genuine benefit to the world.
· Around the 2020 elections, Sunday Morning, a CBS television show had a wonderful segment on waiting. The information in this video Impatience: Why we don’t want to Wait is powerful.
· Though the world rushes through life finding it hard to wait, Patricia Raybon explains how Waiting for God to Speak will help us all.
· As our world is in much turmoil, so many are used to instant gratification. However, God often calls us to wait for the right time. Learning to Wait explores some theological reasonings behind waiting, and how God is present in the waiting.
· Martin Luther King, Jr., MLK Prayer wrote a prayer that contemplates the passage in Romans (8:20-23) about how the world is waiting in labor pains for deliverance.
· Shawna Lemay’s website Transactions with Beauty has some beautiful and meaningful poems about waiting, actively waiting, and how to embrace waiting.