(Matthew 11:2-11)
John waits
in the hard light of prison,
air thick with iron and questions.
Are you the one,
or must we keep on waiting?
The answer comes
not as argument
but as a litany of happenings:
the blind open their eyes
to greet the sun rise,
the lame remember their legs,
and walk among us
lepers feel skin becoming
home again,
whole and clean,
the deaf taste sound,
a gift of the very
first time
the dead remember breath,
and return to being
and the poor are surprised
by good news spoken gently
in their own language.
Blessed are those
who do not stumble
over such a quiet revolution.
As a child
I walked behind
five hundred sheep
one old dog and me,
dust, sun, slow woolly backs
moving paddock to paddock.
My father taught me
the gospel of slowness:
if the dust rises,
you are going to fast
Do not make dust..
Let the mob graze,
let them wander,
let time stretch
until this is the only task
in the world.
No rushing through
To something else.
No anxious glancing
for the next thing.
Just this:
the flock, the dog,
the paddock,
and the waiting.
John’s question
is the raised dust
of a restless heart.
Is this it?
Do we wait for another?
Jesus answers:
Wait and see.
Stop chasing a straight line
into some shining future.
Look sideways, close at hand:
what you long for
is already brushing
your sleeves.
The kingdom has come
near,
near
enough to touch.
Waiting is not
standing in a queue
seeking another person,
idea,
event.
Waiting is
opening your eyes
to the One already here.
This is the artist’s gift:
the waiting that sees.
Walking home
one Melbourne morning,
car left at the garage,
I drifted through familiar streets
and was ambushed by beauty:
trees lit from within,
gardens whispering their colours,
tiny finches stitching the air
with quick-beating wings.
The Spirit of God
alive in Glen Iris,
alive in the unspectacular street
you think you know.
All it asked of me
was that I walk
slowly enough
to notice.
We are impatient pilgrims.
Skimming our days
like stones across water,
barely breaking the surface.
We flick our attention
from duty to duty,
even in church
where we come to rest
hurrying through
the very stillness
meant to heal us:
an hour for worship,
but morning tea waits,
lunch waits,
the bulging week waits,
and our minds run ahead
while our bodies stand
before the altar.
We are John again,
demanding
a definitive moment,
a golden thread,
anything
but this ordinary now.
Yet liturgy
is a school for holy waiting.
Not a race through credos and psalms,
but a slow unfolding in stanzas—
spaces written in
for breathing,
for loosening the baggage
from our shoulders,
for letting the Spirit
catch up to our speed.
Here, the empty spaces
are not failures
but doorways.
What is, is,
Christ seems to say.
Sit with it
until it speaks.
So come to this place
with quiet
as your intention.
Before the first word is
spoken,
let there be
no-thing doing:
just your breathing,
your heart lengthening,
your presence deepening
like a well.
There will be time later
for greetings and stories,
for aches and laughter.
For now,
find your centre,
be still,
and know that God is God,
and you are more
than your anxious calendar,
and this is sanctuary.
As we learn again
the treasure hidden
in our worship,
listen to the final instruction:
be still,
very, very still,
and above all else
do not wobble.
Waiting without anxiety
opens a wide horizon,
revealing
the treasures
already at our feet,
we need not echo
John’s uneasy question
again and again.
The answer is here,
walking among us
in quiet power.
Let us be still.
Amen.
