But if that servant says to himself,
‘My master is delayed in coming,’
We are called to be prepared and ready for the Lord. But this means that we must wait for him. The psalmist often encourages us, as when he writes, "Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!" (see Psalm 27:14)
Yet there is a way in which waiting is the hardest part of Christianity. It is the middle ground that we tread between our faith and hope and the fulfillment of that hope. We make our prayers to God but do not immediately see results. We have to persist like the importunate widow and neighbor. We have to keep believing for our breakthrough. But we tend to become suspicious when an all powerful God doesn't meet our desires immediately and entirely, no matter how just and right those desires seem to us. We must even wait on our own sanctification and growth and holiness much more than we would like. We must be content to be patient even with our own weaknesses and failings as we try to grow near to God. The fallen nature in us, our concupiscence, rebels against such waiting. If we are not cautious this rebellion will begin to take shape in our actions as we find ourselves making compromises and trying to attain what we want in ways that we know to be wrong.
and begins to beat the menservants and the maidservants,
to eat and drink and get drunk,
We are called to walk by faith and not by sight (see Second Corinthians 5:7). We are called to trust that there is a meaning even in the waiting.
The Lord does not delay His promise, as some understand delay, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance (see Second Peter 3:9).
Knowing that the Lord has reasons for making us wait is different from knowing those reasons. In fact, we usually can't know them. They usually can only make sense to us in hindsight once the growth the waiting brings about comes to pass. In other words, if we could know it right away we probably wouldn't need the waiting. But it is something that teaches its lessons to us when we live it. From this we can learn to see the waiting itself as a gift, one to which we could only respond well by the power of the Holy Spirit who gives us the fruit of patient perseverance.
“Who, then, is the faithful and prudent steward
whom the master will put in charge of his servants
to distribute the food allowance at the proper time?
Blessed is that servant whom his master on arrival finds doing so.
Those who wait well are the ones who can make good use of the Lord's gifts. They do not need to hide their talents in the ground out of fear, nor put their light under a bushel basket, nor squander their inheritance on dissipation. They have sufficient trust in the Lord, even without seeing or understanding his plan perfectly, to use their gifts for the sake of the giver.
The world had to wait thousands of years for the mystery that Paul finally revealed, "that the Gentiles are coheirs, members of the same Body, and copartners in the promise in Christ Jesus through the Gospel." Even now the mystery of God's timing is obscure to us. But we do see the evidence of the beauty of that plan as it unfolds in history. We learn to trust him as we celebrate his faithfulness in the past, knowing that he will be faithful again.
Sing praise to the LORD for his glorious achievement;
let this be known throughout all the earth.
Shout with exultation, O city of Zion,
for great in your midst
is the Holy One of Israel!
We have been entrusted with much. We have been given good grounds for hope. Let us lean into the waiting, into living faith and hope with the patience the Holy Spirit provides.
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