The Waiting TIme

John Bell (Iona Community)

You keep us waiting.
You, the God of all time,
want us to wait
for the right time in which to discover
who we are, where we are to go,
who will be with us, and what we must do.
So thank you … for the waiting time.

You keep us looking.
You, the God of all space,
want us to look in the right and wrong places
for signs of hope,
for people who are hopeless,
for visions of a better world which will appear
among the disappointments of the world we know.
So thank you … for the looking time.

You keep us loving.
You, the God whose name is love,
want us to be like you –
to love the loveless and the unlovely and the unloveable;
to love without jealousy or design or threat;
and, most difficult of all,
to love ourselves.
So thank you … for the loving time.

And in all this,
you keep us.
Through hard questions with no easy answers;
through failing where we hoped to succeed
and making an impact where we felt we were useless;
through the patience and the dreams and the love of others;
and through Jesus Christ and his Spirit,
you keep us.
So thank you …. for the keeping time,
and for now,
and for ever,

Amen.