“Be Watchful! Be Alert! You do not know when the time will come.”
Mark 13:33
This honest reminder from Mark that we do not know when the time will come stirs up a sense of anxiety in my often impatient heart. I love to make plans. I like to know where and when things will happen so I can plan accordingly and hopefully control the details. If it were up to me, I would have an outfit layed out the night before Jesus’ coming rather than live each day with this sense of the looming unknown. The concept of God’s plan and His timing seems completely foreign to my detail-oriented mind, yet as I immerse myself in the Amate experience I find more and more that God is calling me to learn how to release control and wait on His timing rather than my own. To wait, but not grow tired of waiting. For me, my time here at Amate thus far has felt like an extended lesson in the virtue of patience, but not my begrudging version of patience, rather, patience with a smile.I had hoped that Amate would be a magical place where once I arrived I would suddenly know God’s plan for my life. All energy was focused on just getting to Chicago and then, in my version of the plan, God would reveal to me His will for my life. But four months in, I have realized that much less than knowing a plan for my life, I honestly haven’t even figured out God’s plan and purpose for these 11 months at Amate. And that’s perfectly okay. On my first day of work in August, I found out that the tutoring program I had volunteered to coordinate didn’t begin until October. I was so anxious for the kids to arrive, to get the ball rolling, to feel like I had come to Chicago for a reason. It seemed to me like I was wasting time with empty waiting. Why couldn’t the kids just start now? Why could I just know my purpose now? What am I waiting for?
While I felt like it was me waiting all this time for something to happen, in truth it was God waiting on me. Waiting for me to realize that His plan and timing are better than my own. I always thought that surrendering to God’s plan would be giving up and blindly following instead of forging ahead with my own plans and ideas. Instead, God has showed me that by trusting in Him and waiting on His timing I am not blindly following but instead faithfully surrendering the need to lead my own path. I often grow impatient, wondering why God hasn’t answered a prayer, only to find months later that he provided for me in a way far beyond anything I could have planned or asked for myself. And instead of gritting my teeth and waiting in annoyance, God calls me to wait in joyful hope.
Each morning, I try to pray an Our Father, focusing especially on the line “Give us this day, our daily bread”. This daily bread that I am asking for is the hope for each day that God is alive, and God is love. He is not lost in the world and has not forgotten about me. He is working each day on a plan for my life. By actively seeking out this glimmer of hope each day, I am able to wait joyfully as I discover step by step where God is calling me. This has been a tremendous blessing for me in waiting for work to start, waiting for my community to learn to trust, waiting to feel more adjusted in Chicago. These little breadcrumbs of hope, leading me on God’s path, have come in many forms. A handshake of thanks from a parent when picking their child up from my tutoring program. The smile on a student’s face when he FINALLY understood long division. Affirmation from a housemate. An unexpected phone call from a friend. I often find myself surprised by the joy in each of these moments of hope throughout my day, especially on the days when I become bogged down with my own worries and forget to be on the lookout for God in my day. The surprise of hope inspires me to watch more vigilantly for living signs of God in the world. This advent, let us each seek out our daily bread, asking God to teach us how to watch and wait in joyful hope.
“What I say to you, I say to all: “Watch!”
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