Waiting is human - Warten ist menschlich

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Hajnalka Ravasz gehört seit vielen Jahren zum Leitungsteam der Studientagung für Theologiestudierende, wo sie selbst einmal Teilnehmerin war.

The psalm is a song of King David. Patiently waiting and yearning – this may describe our lives these past weeks and months. We were yearning so much fpr the encounter with the Theology students from all over Europe in Poland, and like so much else, this encounter was one of the things we could not have this year and needed to postpone. And so we hope for fulfilment of our yearning and waiting next year.

Waiting is part of life, and we have all life to practice waiting in patience. Recent times have, however, been quite a challenge: how did you do? And how are you coping today? Are you good at waiting? Do you find it hard? – Are you one of the lucky ones that find it easy to wait? I notice that shorter foreseeable waits are ok with me. When I see the queue in front of the doctor’s office getting shorter, I am confident that soon it will be my turn. When the traffic light shows red, but I see other cars passing, I am sure to be next to cross. But when it is about waiting for unforeseeable future events, I am really not so good.

In addition to daily routines in patience, like waiting for sleep in the evening or for vacation time to finally begin, there have been new challenges: waiting for a loved one to call, who cannot come by in person. For someone bringing groceries. Or for a therapy or operation which had to be postponed because of this stae of emergency. We had to learn to wait in front of stores – when the maximum of people allowed were already inside.

Waiting has always been part of the Church’s history. Even the first Christians were not all paragons of patience. The apostle Paul had a problem: many Christians excepted that Christ would soon return. But his return did not happen. Paul realized that all Christian life is basically waiting for the Lord to return. The Messiah was there, lived in the world and went to heaven after he had died. And now the world had to wait for him. But how?

For Paul, two things mattered most: Christians were meant to live meaningful lives in community with each other. And they were not supposed to lose hope for the return of Christ. “But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. “

Christian life therefore is a time of waiting, an extended time of Advent. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote on this: «Celebrating Advent means learning how to wait. Waiting is an art which our impatient age has forgotten. We want to pluck the fruit before it has had time to ripen. Greedy eyes are soon disappointed when what they saw as luscious fruit is sour to the taste. In disappointment and disgust they throw it away. The fruit, full of promise rots on the ground. It is rejected without thanks by disappointed hands.

The blessedness of waiting is lost on those who cannot wait, and the fulfilment of promise is never theirs. They want quick answers to the deepest questions of life and miss the value of those times of anxious waiting, seeking with patient uncertainties until the answers come. They lose the moment when the answers are revealed in dazzling clarity.

Who has not felt the anxieties of waiting for the declaration of friendship or love? The greatest, the deepest, the most tender experiences in all the world demand patient waiting. This waiting is not in emotional turmoil, but gently growing, like the emergence of spring, like God’s laws, like the germinating of a seed. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1928-1931)

„I waited patiently for the Lord.”

Rev. Dr. Hajnalka Ravasz