Waiting....a Centering Excercise

Prayer for Illumination:

Lord we bring ourselves to your word this morning,

And we ask that you would speak to us that we might hear your words.

Unstop our ears to listen,

Chase the thoughts of tasks unfinished and tasks yet to do from our minds,

Open our hearts to be responsive to your Spirit’s breathe.

To this end Lord,

May the meditations of our hearts

And the words of my mouth

Be pleasing to you

Oh Lord, our rock and our redeemer.

It’s in Christ’s name we pray. AMEN

Our Message this morning is entitled: Waiting! A Centering Exercise

Waiting!

Waiting is something that, if we are brutally honest with ourselves, most of us hate doing.

That being said, however, we do need to admit that there are times when we really don’t mind waiting. Waiting is a good thing when:

You wait for your favorite movie to be released- after all you can’t rush creative genius

Or the next volume in a series of books you’re reading

Or Waiting to be seated at a fancy restaurant

But, more often than not, waiting is something we don’t enjoy all that much and most of us hate waiting.

Consider this scenario:

It’s been an extremely long day. Yet, there is still way too much to do. You swing past the Village Market on your way home to grab a few ingredients for tonight’s supper. You grab your items and make your way to the register to check out only to find you’re stuck waiting in line behind the woman who has thirty items in her cart and is going through the express check out. Can you believe the nerve of some people! You begin to stew. Once you finally get to the young cashier, who is In Training according to a ribbon pinned precariously to her nametag, you are forced to wait even longer as she fumbles to try to replace a register tape that the woman with thirty items has forced to run out. With shaking hands and a hesitant smile she tells you it will be just a second, as she needs to wait on her manager for help. Now you’re stuck waiting on two more people! What was supposed to be a quick stop turns into a half hour of frustrated waiting.

Waiting, often times it’s exasperating and we simply do not like it. Yet, waiting as the scenario demonstrates is a part of everyday life. In a word, it’s unavoidable.

Whether we want to or not we wait at Drs. offices, gas stations, grocery stores, hospitals, restaurants, and the list of places where we are forced to wait could go on forever.

Not only do we wait at places, we wait for things. The results from recent medical tests, grades from school, the car from the mechanic shop, news from loved ones, again this list also could go on forever. Even in a technologically driven fast-paced society, we succumb to waiting.

But, have you ever stopped to consider that waiting is biblical?

• Consider, Noah in the Ark- Noah and his family along with all the animals waited for the flood to subside- for more than 7 months

• Or, what about Abraham and Sarah- Abraham was 100 years old before Isaac was born

• There’s Jonah- Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for 3 days before being spit out on the shores of Nineveh

• Or Saul, later to become Paul- Paul waited for three days for his sight to return after being divinely debilitated.

• Or, Zechariah- Zechariah waited for Elizabeth to carry to term the baby inside her once barren womb. Yet, after the baby was born, as the family rejoiced, Zechariah waited an additional eight days before he could open his mouth and speak.

• And finally, there’s Mary- the blessed mother of our Lord Jesus Christ.

This morning we are going to come to God’s word a bit differently. If you would like to follow along, the word this morning is found in Luke 1: 26-55: Listen to the Word of the Lord

YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8Vq3pSOofY

ME: This is the Word of the Lord Congregation: Thanks be to God

Then Mary said, “Let it be...” Luke 1:38

Three, Tiny, Seemingly insignificant words.

Yet with these three little words Mary enters her own season of waiting- her personal Advent season.

Nine months she would wait as the baby inside her, placed there by the power of the Holy Spirit, grew and developed. She would wait as her body changed, metamorphosing from non-pregnant average Nazarethian girl to pregnant- very pregnant mother of baby Jesus. She would wait as the village around her frenzied after hearing and witnessing the news first hand. Can you imagine- “Yeah right Mary- sure it was the Holy Spirit!” the accusing voices would jeer. “What are you gonna do Joseph?” The inquisitive questions would rise. “Should we stone her for unfaithfulness? Run her out into the wilderness and let the animals take care of her? What a problem child!” The villagers would surely condemn. And yet, Mary waited.