One of the most difficult things in life, I've found, is the excruciation of waiting. It's the uncertainty which comes along with the waiting that kills, really. You know you need to get somewhere, but never know if you'll eventually arrive there. Worse still if there seem to be a thousand and one hindrances between your present point and the intended destination.

Still, waiting is often something that's imposed on us. It's not something we choose to do, for if we could have what we thought was ours to have, we'd all want it instantaneously. We'd want to avoid that pain of unsureness and have in our ready possession that which we think is rightfully ours.

The problem with waiting in anxiety is that we so lose sight of the present and fixate our attention on a future which hasn't yet come to pass. When one is obsessed with waiting, one stops living. The two cannot exist in harmony.

Maybe one needs to know what it means to live in the present and let the waiting deal with itself. If we live faithfully in the present, fulfilling all that is our lot to fulfil, perhaps the waiting itself is immaterial as time will unfold the fruit of our present faithfulness.

The problem is, faithfulness does not always seem to yield the desired fruit. There are times when faithfulness to truth and justice often seems to place us at a grave disadvantage. But only if we measure it in terms of temporal time. With the world being the way it is, the law of cause and effect may not always work the way we expect it to.

But there is another world I know of, where all the faithful waiters who have failed to reap the fruit of their patient waiting will find their their deep consolation. All that has been unduly owed to them will be paid up a hundredfold and they shall come out rejoicing.

Waiting is a discipline that needs to be cultivated. Not just waiting, but waiting faithfully. And if the waiting does not yield that which we have hoped for, then we'll just have to trust that things have a way of sorting themselves out one fine day. It may not turn out to be what we've hoped for; in fact, it may be more than what we've hoped for.