August 30 – “Waiting”

The crowd was called together to gather around the garland bedecked tree brought inside the house in honor of the festive season.  Beautifully carved figures of stars and children and snowflakes and gems dangled whimsically from heavily laden branches.  The happy music came to a halt and the good host waited for attention to turn toward him.  His words captured the crowd, and everyone seemed to lean a bit farther forward.    "You have all been invited here tonight to celebrate an occasion.  But what some of your do not know is what that occasion actually is."  The Queen and her husband joined the others in straining to listen carefully, so as not to miss a syllable.  Perhaps they had managed to surprise the young Prince with an unexpected frivolity.  That would be exciting to watch, for he was always susceptible to such joys.  The speaker continued, "We all know that this fine young Prince who has lived among us has most recently completed many years of study.  And most of us know that this very event this night is … not about him at all!"   Today has been a day of waiting for me.  It started out simple enough.  I was determined to get the yards watered, so I went right out when I picked up the newspaper and started out number one area.  And then I waited for the sprinkler to finish its 15 minutes of spewing water on the lawn so I could move it to another spot.  That's where problem number one came up.  I forgot to set the timer.  I'm not really sure how much water that section of ground got.  I remembered on all the others though.  Move the sprinkler.  Turn it on.  Set the timer.  Wait.  Eight times.  Wait times eight.   While I was waiting on th sprinkler, I started work on next week's teaching.  I knew where I was going woth it right away.  The research went well.  But some days I have to wait for just the right words to come to communicate.  I got the basic plan down after several hours.  Now I'll wait and do some work on it every day the rest of the week.    I had to wait for the customer service department at the Chronicle to answer the phone.  That wait is so much easier when you don't have to actually hold the phone.  I was determined to straighten out a problem that happened when Mom agreed to something when I wasn't here.  It changed our whole setup.  After hammering it out with them, we now have the subscription extended to July of next year.   I was able to get Mom a hearing aid appointment.  But it's not until the end of next week.  Now I get to wait for that, which means I gear up to repeat everything for another week.   I also had to wait for the icemaker repair guy.  He was supposed to be here between 8 and 12 a.m.  Wait.  Not that it was broken, exactly, but it seemed to have forgotten how to stop.  When we opened the door, ice would fall out everywhere.  He finally got here.  Sent it through a cleaning cycle and we'll know by Wednesday morning if the sensor is bad.   When he left I still had to get Mom to water therapy, go to the bank, Academy and WalMart, get gas in the car, and pick Mom up.  After all of which I could do what I was really waiting all morning to do … go see Chris.   Psalms 27:14 says, "Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord."   Father, I'm not so good at this waiting thing.  Help me, please.  Amen.