An old time Parson Ponders for Lent that may be more valid today than when I first wrote it!
I've spent my share of time in waiting rooms. Clergy people often seem to
find themselves in those kinds of places. It used to be that I deplored
waiting rooms. Sitting there seemed like so much wasted
time. But over the
years, I've come to appreciate the waiting room more. Waiting rooms are
places for pondering.
Last week when I was in the waiting room I pondered my
shoes, the nubs on my jacket, the construction of the chair in which I was
sitting, the snow outside the window and the posters on the wall. When there were people present I pondered the people.
Taking a good book along works well too, for there are usually long periods with no interruptions (like for
instance, the nurse saying "The Doctor will see you now!)
And of course, there are the magazines. Waiting rooms give you that second
chance to catch up on things that happened several months
ago that perhaps
you were too busy to peruse at that time. Just last week I finally got to
read the old issues of Newsweek that told the story of
Michael Jordan's
retirement, the ill fated military action in Somalia ,
and the floods in the
midwest. It is always
interesting to read what reporters and politicians have
to say and what they predict will happen next week when
you're reading it in a
waiting room four to six months after the fact.
One of the articles I read last week that I wouldn't have
wanted to miss was a short reflection by a woman named Michelle McCormick. She was reflecting on some of these pondering opportunities too. She was making the case that all of us need these times when there is no outside stimulus,
where our minds simply run free. She
said that jogging was one of those times for her. She
said that she had solved many a problem and written many a
story while
jogging.
And Michelle posed this question: If Isaac Newton were living today and, he
were sitting under the proverbial apple tree would he have
seen the apple fall
and thought about gravity being the cause of its
falling? Her guess was that
in today's world where every moment is filled with music or
some other
stimulus, he would likely have been listening to a walkman
and would never
have noticed the plummeting fruit, and so never speculated
on the theory of
gravity. But
fortunately in his time, Newton
had the luxury of daydreaming,
of sitting under a tree and letting the mind roam---sort of
like sitting in a
waiting room today.
The season of Lent offers us a time to daydream, to sit
under the shadow of a
rough hewn tree and ponder what may have passed us by in
earlier, busier
times. Lent invites
us to shut off the walkman for a few moments, to sit in
quiet contemplation and look at our world and look at Jesus
and see where the experience takes us.
Even Jesus needed the waiting room experience. His trip to the wilderness as his ministry was about to begin was a
sort of journey to the waiting room.
Surrounded by the drab, lifeless landscape, his mind and spirit were free to roam, free to center on possibilities,
free to grow.
And so I invite you to Lent.
I invite you to God's waiting room.
Like your
doctors' office, this waiting room is stacked with lots of
stories of God's
activity in our lives and a whole cast of interesting
people. They are
all there waiting to take hold of our minds, whether we are
bored, weary or
fearful. They are
there to bring us up to date on what we might have missed
in busier times.
God's waiting room is a beautiful place, a welcoming place,
a freeing place.
I hope you will be able to spend time there this Lent.
