Waiting with and for faith

The Roman Catholic Lectionary for the Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time is filled with faith. The faith of the people in the Scripture texts is intertwined with waiting for a response from the Divine. As the joke goes, ”Lord, give me patience, Right Now!”. The position of waiting is difficult. The trust which people need and develop while waiting for a person, an event, a diagnosis or a break is the faith which is gifted to us by God. The demands of this trust in Judeo-Christian faith history have been huge. Abraham followed the instructions of God in faith beyond reason that the promise of many descendants would be fulfilled even as he and Sarah grew old and he was asked to sacrifice the child of their old age to God. Mary, Jesus mother, was asked to accept a miraculous birth to a virgin. This would leave her as an unwed mother in a culture for which the consequence could be stoning to death. Why don’t I get an answer? What does God want from me? These are difficult. Much of our impatience comes from our strictly logical, time linear, finite view of ourselves and our universe. The faith we have been given is the trust in an intimate relationship which the Divine, the transcendent and infinite through the indwelling spirit communion with God.