Everyone in the hospital has an abundance of waiting: co-workers, patients, and families.

• We wait for the results of the tests so we know what the next steps are.
• We wait for the other shoe to drop.
• We wait for rooms.
• We wait for the ambulance.
• We wait for a call from our family members.
• We wait for the pain to go away.
• We wait for the treatment to start.
• We wait to feel better.
• We wait to feel worse.
• We wait for the last breath to come.

We wait.

When I started working in the hospital, I wanted to do something about the waiting, something to fix it, something to make it better or easier. I sometimes try humor. I always try presence. I sometimes offer answers. Or questions. Or conversations.

I haven’t figured out how to take away the waiting.

I’m not sure I can. Human beings live in time. And people and procedures and treatments and results take time. That’s true in the hospital. And outside. It takes 21 years to go from birth to 21. There’s no way to avoid that. It takes 25 days to go from December 1 to December 25. There’s no way to avoid that.

But as I started thinking through our Advent theme for this week, Peace, I started thinking about the connection between waiting and peace.

Waiting is a way to describe the time between an announcement and an event, between a test and a result. It’s the waiting period.

Peace, or worry, or anger or despair are our responses during the waiting period. Sometimes our responses TO the waiting period.

So, if we could look at our response IN waiting, we may find the time more endurable, more beneficial, more tolerable.

We’ll take a look this week.

If you want to read ahead, you can look at the scriptures for this week: Isaiah 40:1-11, 2 Peter 3:8-15a, Psalm 85, Mark 1:1-8.