God's timing is not ours.

Can we all agree on that?

So, when we pray, we wait. These two actions are inextricably linked.

But we are impatient people, aren't we?

We often interpret having to wait as God not answering our prayer.

I once heard that what God does in us while we wait is as important, if not MORE important, than what it is we are praying and waiting for.

Henri Nouwen would agree. Listen to what he wisely writes about patience:

"Being patient is difficult. It is not just waiting until something happens over which we have no control: the arrival of a bus, the end of the rain, the return of a friend, the resolution of a conflict. Patience is not waiting passively until someone else does something. Patience asks us to live the moment to the fullest, to be completely present to the moment, to taste the here and now, to be where we are. We behave as if the real thing will happen tomorrow, later, and somewhere else. Be patient and trust that the treasure you are looking for is hidden in the ground on which you stand."

As you pray and as you wait, can you at the same time live the current moment to the fullest?

Can you trust that God is at work behind the scenes of your life and therefore you are free to live each day as the gift it is, rather than thinking that "the real thing" will happen as soon as your prayer is answered; tomorrow rather than today?

I love Nouwen's last sentence - "Be patient and trust that the treasure you are looking for is hidden in the ground on which you stand."

Pray, friends! But as you do, understand patience will be asked of you. But patience isn't passivity. It is standing at attention, eyes wide open to all the answered prayers that are right in front of you, in this moment right now, hidden in the ground on which you stand.