Skip to main content

Waiting


Yesterday was Good Friday.  Tomorrow is Easter.  Today... we wait.  Most years, I think Holy Saturday feels a little awkward.  You aren't quite sure what to do with yourself.  It's hard to be as solemn as Good Friday.  But you can't celebrate either, not yet.  So you wait.

But this year, Holy Saturday seems to have an added layer of meaning.  Because that is exactly what we are all doing: just waiting.  Waiting to get out of the house again and go someplace, to see friends and family, to return to work.  Hoping that the current moment,  the awkward in-between moment of waiting, will end.

Yesterday evening I hit the halfway point in my reading through the Psalms, which some of you are doing along with me in the Psalms Challenge.  This morning I started with Psalm 77, which turned out to be a very meaningful psalm for Holy Saturday.  The psalmist begins with a cry to God for help:

          I cry aloud to God,
          aloud to God, that he may hear me.
          In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord....

He misses God's presence and feels abandoned:

          Has his steadfast love for ever ceased?
          Are his promises at an end for all time?
          Has God forgotten to be gracious?

Yet he remembers God's faithfulness in the past as he led his people on the Exodus from Egypt:

          Thy way was through the sea,
          thy path through the great waters;
          yet thy footprints were unseen.

Today God's footprints are unseen, and we wait for him to lead his people forth again.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

E-mail Wit on a Lazy Sunday Afternoon

It seems as though practically every business where I've ever bought anything in the past decade sends me e-mails about their products, specials, deal-of-the-week, etc.  Normally I delete them immediately, without a second glance. But one this afternoon made me hesitate.  I received a "Walgreens Weekly Ad" e-mail.  Its subject line read as follows: "We can't stop lowering prices." So instead of hitting "delete," I sent a quick reply: "In that case, I think I'll wait and shop next week." I have no idea whether or not that reply will go to a real e-mail address and be read by an actual human being.  But I hope so.
5 comments
Read more

Non capisco!

About once a week I get an e-mail from something called the Italian Cultural Institute in New York.  I don't know why.  I know nothing about them and have no idea how I got on their mailing list.  But I generally take a quick look at the e-mail, because every now and then I see something interesting. The other day I got one of these and saw what appeared to be a potentially interesting lecture today.  It was by a professor named Stefano Jossa, currently at Royal Holloway, the University of London.  He was going to be speaking on his new book, in Italian, but the title of which in English would be The Most Beautiful in the World: Why Love the Italian Language .  It sounded intriguing, it was free, all you had to do was register and get a Zoom link.  So I did. It turned out that the lecture was actually being sponsored not by the Italian Cultural Institute in New York, but rather by the one in Montreal.  But who cares, right?  As long a...
4 comments
Read more

Pandemic and Globalization: Some Thoughts

I have been promising to jot down a few thoughts on the coronavirus pandemic and globalization.  A few days ago I read an essay by John Gray, arguing that the pandemic marks a turning  point, one that will prompt a move away from liberalism, free trade, and globalization.  Gray is a thoughtful and interesting writer, and you can find his essay here -- although I don't think it is particularly compelling. Gray's analysis fits into a broader political narrative that has already been gaining traction over the past few years: that we are seeing a retreat from liberal politics and from the globalized world order as countries move increasingly in nationalist, populist, and even authoritarian directions. National populism (which can but need not be authoritarian) is a real phenomenon, in the USA, across the West, and to some extent even globally.  We see it in the election of Donald Trump, in Brexit, and in the rise of various national populist parties in the democr...
2 comments
Read more