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Quaker Life
January/February 2003
To Wait On the Lord... What Does It Mean?
By Terry Wallace
When we hear the exhortation "Wait on the Lord!' or read a declaration like Isaac Penington's on worship, that "there is to be a waiting in silence till the spirit of the Lord moves to speak and also gives words to speak," we are inclined to visualize waiting worship as a static activity. We see Friends sitting quietly, heads bowed, eyes closed, waiting for the Spirit to move one or more of them to minister. Yet, to see these actions as the sole meanings of what waiting signifies is to misunderstand the full range of meanings invested in a simple word.
The word wait is large with meaning. According to The Oxford English Dictionary, wait can carry any of eight different meanings; the first two are the most familiar.
To wait can mean to remain inactive and to stay in one spot until something anticipated occurs. A closely related second definition is to remain in readiness or expectation. We see Jesus' disciples doing such waiting in Jerusalem until Pentecost, when they receive God's spirit and power to declare His Truth and go forward with His gospel. Likewise, we see the Westmoreland Seekers involved in such waiting before George Fox descends from Pendle Hill and visits them with the gospel, whereupon many of them become active ministers, spreading the gospel throughout England and the Western world. These meanings of waiting readily call to mind the exhortation in every Yearly Meeting discipline that our "Meetings for Worship be held in expectant waiting for divine guidance."
However, a third, less obvious, meaning of waiting is to tarry until another catches up. Jesus' whole ministry shows us this waiting as He tarried with His disciples until they were fully ready to receive His life, salvation, power and teaching. This meaning is particularly important to our Meeting/Church life, where we may tend to become impatient over what appears to us the slowness of spiritual growth and discernment of others. An appropriate antidote to this impatience is to realize that others are often tarrying until we catch up!
A fourth meaning of waiting is to remain temporarily neglected, unattended to or postponed. Jesus temporarily neglected Lazarus and his family for a greater demonstration of God's power. Such waiting is often not easy on those who feel temporarily neglected and unattended to. In fact, even our Lord found it painful when He found Mary and Martha deeply grieved, and wept at Lazarus' grave.
Other meanings suggest waiting as an active dimension. For instance, a fifth definition is to be a waiter or waitress at a meal or event. In our gatherings for worship, this is a very important meaning. When we wait upon our Lord with others, we wait as the Lord's servants at His inward supper. If He gives us ministry to offer to others, we indeed become His servers at His table, offering the bread and wine of His word to feed their hearts and lives. Certainly, there is even more significance in this particular use of the word. Jesus, at His last Passover meal, became a waiter to the disciples, washing their feet to teach them a lesson in servanthood.
Another active meaning of to wait is to serve the needs of others, to be in attendance upon them. Jesus' ministry is replete with instances of this meaning: His healings, His feeding of the 5,000, and His visiting of salvation upon the woman at the well and upon Zaccheus. It took the disciples a long time to learn to serve as true servants. Their vision of God's kingdom was one in which they were the greatest of all, instead of the least!
A further active meaning sounds strange at first: to visit or make a formal call upon someone. Being directed by our Lord to make formal calls can be both surprising to, and painful for, us. Our Lord sent the early Christian Ananias of Damascus to Saul of Tarsus to cure his blindness, a difficult visit for Ananias, since Saul up to that point had been a zealous persecutor of Christians. Yet, this same Saul was about to become God's apostle to the Gentiles, Paul.
The final meaning of to wait perhaps contains all the foregoing meanings—to follow, to depend upon. While this kind of waiting may be full of joy and love at times, it is not always necessarily so. To follow Jesus also requires cross-carrying and suffering. Our Lord's own dependence upon His Father led Him along a most difficult road, finally to and through the cross and grave. Indeed, waiting can become a deep act of faith, requiring patience and steadfastness and God's own help and power for us to see our work through.
These active forms of waiting—serving, visiting, following—may seem strange to those today who observe worship, and especially unprogrammed Friends worship. However, our founding Friends viewed worship in a much broader sense, one in total accord with all of the foregoing definitions of waiting upon our Lord. The early Quaker minister, Edward Burrough wrote the following definition:
"The worship of God in itself is this: It is walking with God, and living with him in converse and fellowship, in spirit and in truth, for He is only worshipped therein. To do truth and speak truth: this is the true worship of God, where the mind is guided with the spirit of Truth and the presence of the Lord felt at all times, his fear in the hearts of people, and his counsel stood in, and his covenant felt—which unites to the Lord in spirit. This is the true worship of God. It is without respect of times or things."(A Faithful Testimony Concerning the True Worship of God—What It Is in Itself and Who are the True Worshippers, 1659)
The essence of waiting upon God is our being given over to His direction and service. When we gather in worship to wait upon the Lord, we recognize who really does the speaking in our meetings of worship, who moves men and women to minister to one another: Christ, our Lord! When we speak, we do not speak our own words in our own wisdom and our own time. As Isaac Penington, a 17th century Quaker apostle stated: "God's church is a gathering in His Spirit. If people speak, they must speak as the oracles of God, as vessels out of which God speaks." Likewise, if they act, they must serve as instruments in His hands. Such are the true waiters upon our Lord.
Terry Wallace is Clerk of Worship and Counsel of Warrington Montly Meeting, Baltimore Yearly Meeting. He, his wife, Diane, and daughter Emily, live in Pennsylvania.
Copyright (c) 2003 Friends United Meeting
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