The Courage of Gandalf (is the courage to wait)

Wait for it....

"I would have fainted if I had not believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in my life. Wait on the Lord. Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart. Wait, I say, on the Lord." Ps. 27:13-14

We often equate courage with bravery and get nowhere because the two are synonyms. It is another dead-end tautology. The older (and truer) meaning of courage had to do with endurance. "Guts," as C.S. Lewis called it. Guts to endure, to hang on through the assault, through the storm, through the siege and the struggle. It has nothing to do with winning; the brave do not always win. Rather, it has to do with not giving in, to reach your breaking point and not break.

This is the meaning behind that strange aside Paul makes in Ephesians. After taking over five chapters to assert the romantically heroic image of our oneness in Christ, how God sees us in Him, how He has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing so that we may edify the Church and do battle along side Him against the forces of spiritual darkness---after this vigorous onslaught, there comes an odd punctuation: "and having done all, to stand" (Eph. 6:13). It is as if victory is not the point. It is already won in Christ (I Cor. 15:57), but it is not the point. Endurance is the point. Holding on. Standing strong. Not moving forward but neither moving backward. Like Gandalf on the bridge of Khazad Dum, we stand as "a wizened tree before the onset of a storm." We cannot move, but they shall not pass.

This is why Psalm 27 equates courage with waiting on God. Waiting is the frustrating thing, the annoying thing, the gnawing, agonizing thing, but it is the courageous thing because it is the epitome of endurance, of hope, of faith. We wait and do not faint because we believe, not only that God is good, but that we will see His goodness with our own eyes, that we will taste it with our own lips. We believe in this hope, the hope of His goodness, of His promise to work all things out to our good. So we have courage: we wait. We endure, and in the midst of it all we find that God strengthens our heart for the endurance, because His goodness comes to those who wait.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

The Sacrament of Waiting (Homily 49)

"...they shall not be ashamed that wait for Me." Is. 49:23b

Trust is a matter of waiting. Waiting to see what happens. Waiting to see what unfolds. Waiting to see how it all turns out. Waiting to know whether or not the endeavor was successful, or the enterprise was worth it, or the action had its consequences, or the person kept their word. Trust is all a waiting game, a frustrating yet common game, feeling more like a necessary evil than a necessity.

Waiting is not about sitting still or inactivity. On the contrary, waiting is often when we are at our busiest. We fill out applications. We make calls, make connections. Go to this place and that. Get involved in this thing or that. We make assessments, weigh options, keep our eyes open and ears to the ground, and do our research, all while continually puttering about in our daily work and hobbies and habits. Truly, waiting is more than a static thing. You could almost call it an ecstatic thing: we feel ready to explode at any moment.

Reality is always a paradox on some level, and intimately woven into our bustle is waiting. No calls have been returned. No letters (for good or ill) have been received. No significant or special someone has presented themselves. No one rewards or even seems to acknowledge any of your contributions. Therein is the paradox. In the very midst or all our doings, we can only sit, sit, sit, sit, sit. And we do not like it, not one little bit.

Waiting is a frustration for anyone, but for the child of God it need not be a source of despair, for as said earlier waiting is where trust begins. Even after our best efforts to make something happen, there is always the period of silence and uncertainty. Into that void come doubts and fears and the diabolic death spiral that pulls us into ourselves: "What else could I have done? I should have done more! It's all on me!" It is not all on you, and that is what the silence teaches us.

The book of Isaiah is saturated with the promises of God, complete with fantastic proclamations and wild resolutions so unexpected and counter-intuitive that you would think God is mad. But He is not mad. He is the only sanity left, and He is teaching us how to think straight. The times of waiting are for our sanity, viz., they are meant to turn us to God. "This thing is not in my hands. It is too big for me." That is the beginning of sanity and peace.

When the waiting does finally end (as all waiting does), it will be so much sweeter than any instant gratification, for "thou shalt know that I am the Lord" (vs. 23). If things were easy, then God would be as unreal as vapor. It is in the trying that He is made real. In the birth pangs, He is enfleshed. If we would have a real God in our lives, then we must let the waiting play itself out. We must go about our business in hopeful expectation of God's goodness. That is how we live. That is how we trust. That is how we taste and see that the Lord is good. Amen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013