...and waiting

After I wrote yesterday, I remembered that we're in the Advent season now. The season of anticipation, waiting expectantly.

And I also found another old journal entry about waiting, written three years ago while I was on the road. The waiting of Advent is usually seen as a spiritual discipline—with prayer, alms, fasting—to prepare ourselves for Jesus' coming. But, as I wrote three years ago, learning to wait is also crucial in our relationships, in our ability to serve others:

The last few days, I've been thinking that the real point of such patient endurance is to "give others a chance." I think this is also the purpose behind pacifism, nonviolence, non-coercion. Give the other person (perhaps the enemy or aggressor) the chance to repent, or the chance to do the right thing. Don't give up on them and impatiently walk away (or destroy them), but really give them a chance to accept or reject what God is offering.

I thought of those lines at dinner yesterday, when the conversation turned towards Jesus' poverty and all the usual clichés came out ("not poverty but simplicity," "there's a difference between poverty and destitution..." etc). Self-justifications and diversions. Sometimes I feel like blowing up at times like those, because it seems like people are intentionally avoiding truths they do not want to see, and encouraging others to do the same. Blowing up or giving up and walking away.

But I think love in this case means waiting. Giving others a chance to face the truth when they are ready, however long that takes. Pretty much everyone is going to have to face real poverty eventually, as old age gradually strips everything away; maybe then they'll see what Jesus was saying all along. What he demonstrated when he became a human child in a poor family.

Waiting as an an act of respect for the freedom of others. Wanting (maybe desperately wanting) them to come around, or move forward, but not trying to force them. Because it's more important that they accept voluntarily, with their whole heart. Waiting for those we love.