“Wait patiently for the Lord,” the psalmist tells us. The lessons for today all speak to me of waiting: “Wait, Abram, until I am ready to visit the barren Sarai with your heir;” “Wait, Christian, for your transformation into the imago dei;” “Wait, Pharisees, for me to finish my work.” God is at work in our lives and in the world, working out the divine purpose as may be best for each and all—though it is often as hard for us to see that as it was for Abram.

Lent may be viewed as a season of waiting, of getting ready to celebrate the joy of Easter, the promise of new life. Most of us aren’t very good at waiting. We’d much rather be “doing”—something—anything. Even fasting and self-denial, as undesirable as those practices may be to us, seem preferable to “waiting patiently for the Lord.” Waiting for the Lord, however, isn’t passive, regardless of how it may sound. It involves being open to what God has prepared for us. It includes making time to be with the Holy One, being alert, paying attention, listening with our hearts to God’s Word—however it may come, desiring, even yearning, for God’s presence, accepting and welcoming the Divine Presence in whatever way we may perceive it, allowing ourselves to be changed from within so that we may be cleansed, made whole and holy with the first light of Easter.

Realizing that our Lenten waiting is indeed profoundly active, we begin to see that it is the action deep within that makes for a “holy Lent,” that opens our eyes to recognize and turns us away from all that we have allowed to separate us from God and from all God’s children, that reconciles us to Divine Love. Such inner work, inspired and facilitated by Love, readies us for a life of discipleship, walking henceforth day by day in companionship with Christ Jesus, ready, willing and able to be God’s hands and feet in the world around us. It can only happen as we “wait patiently for the Lord” to finish God’s work.