I am not a patient person. As a Brit, I may be acclimated to our quintessential cultural institution, the queue, but the truth is I want things now. I really do not like to wait. I want my online delivery immediately; I want to get through to my doctor or customer service representative right now. And, spiritually and theologically, I am impatient for God’s justice and kingdom.
In our high-tech world, most consumer desires can be almost instantly gratified. If you hold sufficient economic power, your physician will take your calls. However, I am yet to find a way to speed up the full and manifest arrival of God’s new day in a broken world. Indeed, most of the time I feel as if the prospect of God’s justice, love, and mercy spirals ever farther away. I used to be confident that the arc of the moral universe bent toward justice. Now I am not so sure, and I am impatient.
Is it possible to reframe waiting in a positive way, especially for those of us who struggle with its implications? Perhaps one approach is to lean into Paolo Freire’s famous line, “As long as I fight, I am moved by hope; and if I fight with hope, then I can wait.” This column is not the place for a detailed analysis of Freire’s take on liberation theology. However, when I or my friends groan in the face of the seeming decay of liberal democracy, I remember Freire’s words. To struggle for justice, mercy, and love is a way to be moved by hope; more than that, in fighting unfair situations with hope we can find the wherewithal to wait. For waiting ceases to be something that is done to us and becomes something pregnant with promise.
