What are you waiting for?Believe it or not, there was a time in my life when I looked forward to a layover. It was a time when I was young and the world was big. I loved the controlled chaos of an airport and the international people watching it offered. That time has come and gone. I now not only check the price but the duration of a flight when I’m booking. The last thing I want is to spend my precious time waiting in a concourse. I want to get to where I’m going, which is why I cringed last week when I realized I had a three hour layover in the Houston airport. When it really comes down to it, I simply don’t like to wait. I want to be at my destination, not waiting to get there. Yet waiting is essential to going somewhere. The only other option is to stay put. To move forward in any area of life requires waiting and desire. And desire assumes a gap between where we are and where we want to be. More intimacy in marriage, greater purpose at work, more consistent friendships, healthier bodies—whatever desires we have for the future, they all require us to do some waiting; to live in the space between where we are and where we want to be. Sadly, many men choose to avoid waiting by desiring less. We deny our desires so we don’t have to live with the pain of waiting for them to be fulfilled. But it’s like staying home to avoid a layover—it may keep us from having to wait, but it also keeps us from living a fuller life. Maybe if we can learn to wait, to live in the space between where we are and where we want to be, we might actually go somewhere. The Christian tradition has a whole month of the year devoted to learning to wait, and it’s the season we’re in now. In the weeks leading up to Christmas, Christians throughout the centuries have observed the season of Advent, which is all about waiting. It’s a time for acknowledging that the world is not the way it’s supposed to be and imagining a better world to come when Christ returns. This issue of The Second Mountain has some tools for us to relate to our desires and to learn to wait. Instead of fearing, killing, or minimizing our desires, what if we listened to them? Instead of being motivated by shame or fear or failure, what if we could be motivated by desire and a vision for a better future? What desires do you have for your future? What are you waiting for? All the best, Joshua
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