Waiting

It seems like I've spent a good deal of the past two days waiting. Waiting in airports, waiting for takeoff, waiting for work to begin. And even when I haven't been waiting per se, a number of the things I have been doing have involved sitting still while other things happen around me -- which could be thought of as another kind of waiting.

Our mission group left Staunton at about 1:15 in the morning on Wednesday. Ten of us and our luggage -- and two drivers who generously gave their wee morning hours to the cause -- packed ourselves into a van and a pickup truck and drove three hours to Reagan National Airport. It was an uneventful drive, which is what you really hope for at that time of the morning; there was some conversation, but there was also some sleeping in the back of the van, as we made our way through the dark. When we reached the airport, we had to wait for check-in (which was not running full-speed at four in the morning) and security, in order to make our way to the gate and wait for boarding. Our party was spread out through the plane, so we couldn't talk much with each other -- and conversation on a plane is always an iffy proposition -- so much of the flight time felt like waiting to arrive. And when we arrived at the airport in San Pedro Sula, there was still a five hour drive to Copan Ruinas, over roads that were in fairly bad shape after a rainy winter; and several of us jouncing around in the back were waiting most eagerly to get to our hotel. We arrived safely, found our rooms, and then regrouped for dinner at a favorite restaurant in town, and made an early night of it. After all, we'd been up all night, and in the morning we'd have work to do!

But when we arrived at the worksite this morning, we found that supplies we needed hadn't been delivered yet, so there was more waiting. The church of Santa Maria Virgen sits in a beautiful spot on the flank of the mountain that reaches up above the city of Copan Ruinas. There was fog in the city plaza as we left the hotel; by the time we reached the worksite we'd climbed above the fog and found a bright sunny day already in progress. From the worksite we could look out over the valley of the Copan River and to the mountain ridge on the other side. Mission-trippers who'd been here last year looked over the work that had been accomplished since the last trip: foundations laid, trenches dug, rebar towers in place. We could also see clearly how much work there was to do. Without the supplies, though, there wasn't much we could really do just then. We took turns with shovels, adding some space for additional foundation footers that would be needed, because there weren't enough shovels to go around. And we waited.

It occurred to me that all during Advent we at Trinity had talked and preached and prayed about waiting -- it's the Advent thing to do -- but always with the irony that the pre-Christmas season is a tremendously busy time between social parties and family arrangements and church preparations, I'd not done a lot of prayerful waiting in Advent. So perhaps now, on a mountainside in Honduras in Epiphany, was my chance. Perhaps I could use this time not just to wait for a shovel, but to wait in a deeper way as well. The sky was brilliant blue, the mountains across the valley were verdant and lush, there was a branch of vivid red flowers (hibiscus, I think) trailing down the side of the worksite retaining wall, there were people here to build up the church -- not just the building but the communion of saints -- who knew what God might reveal in any moment, if I were just to wait for it?

And then, in a little while, supplies arrived. And there was a whole new variety of jobs to be done: rebar had to be cut, and thick wire had to be bent into square rings for the rebar, and thinner wire had to be cut into ties for the rings, so that they could all be put together into square forms that will be put in the foundations and walls to strengthen their structure. Our waiting issued forth into constructive (literally!) work.

Time waiting -- even when you don't know exactly what you're waiting for -- can become the origins of something creative and constructive when you offer it in the context of God's creating grace. And while it seemed to take a lot of waiting to get here, being here is already being at good work.