• It Is Through The Face That We Encounter God
• A Message of Hope
• Waiting
• An Octopus at Easter.
• Invite relationships
• Transformation
• This Moment
• A Good Story
• Can I Be A Healer?
• The virtue of doubt
• Mary Mackillop, Woman Of Faith
• Fridge Doors And The Rest Of The World
• Entertaining Angels
• More connected than ever, more disconnected than ever
• Feast of Teresa of Avila, 15th October
• The Witness of Maternity Leave
• Something New
• Farewell
• Australian Catholic University is a Public University Open to All
• What if God Was One of Us?
• Zest for life
• Attendance
• Christmas Angel Tree
• A Present For Me
• On being famous
• Reason To Celebrate
• World Youth Day
• May the evening's twilight find me gentle still
• Goodness: God’s Gift To Us
• A time for every purpose under heaven
• The Mad Dash
• The Positive Spirit is Fully Alive
• Its time to change
• Living an Abundant Life

I use public transport these days and I seem to do a lot of waiting. I am not particularly fond of waiting.

There’s a season, says the Old Testament, for everything under the sun, for everything, it seems, except ‘waiting’. Who has not waited for the phone to ring, or for guests to arrive, or for the outcome of an urgent medical test? Who has not shared in the joyous waiting for the birth of a child, or for a loved one to come home from overseas? Who knows of that fear-filled waiting that parents do in the early hours of a morning when their teenage children are not yet home?

Waiting has many faces- there’s the ‘stop standing around talking, let’s do something!’ kind of waiting; And there’s the kind of waiting that offers deeper engagement, a waiting that is integral to the final outcome, the waiting that gives time for the yeast to do its work, a waiting that calls for patience and serenity and the knowledge that the waiting will be worth it.

We are losing the art of waiting. We want everything and we want it now. The culture of immediacy is evidenced in the tomes of junk mail offering instant gratification (‘pay us later’) and emails that scream silently to be answered without delay.

Waiting gives us time to reflect, to let things simmer, to allow for fruitful response. Waiting is a liminal time, a time which allows for transformation to take place and miracles to be born- the shadow time, in all its glory,

‘between the idea and the reality’ (T.S. Eliot: The Hollow Men),

the Saturday between the crucifixion and the resurrection.

Might we not do well to give waiting its due place in our harried world. Let there be a season for waiting.

• Colleen Malone,
• Mission Engagement,
• Strathfield