Waiting

I planted this poppy last year. The first year is always very disappointing because you may get one bloom if your lucky. On the top we can’t see what is going on. We just see a small plant that is green and lives for its season. But underneath the soil is a different story. It started to put down its roots. Those roots started growing and spreading. This spring when it started to warm up, the green started to come out. It sprang up and kept getting bigger like four times the size of last years plant. And now I can see where it will bloom. The buds are big and ripe and have been taunting me with the promise of blooms for two weeks. I don’t even know what color. I think one of them was orange.

           And so I wait.

I have been waiting.

I am still waiting.

But it is not yet time.

I wait for these flowers.

We have all been waiting. Waiting to be able to come to church again. Waiting to be able to hug our grandchildren and great grandchildren tight. Waiting for a hug from our mothers. Waiting to grab a beer with friends. Waiting. All of us are tired of waiting. We want to go out without a mask. We want to not have to wash our hands for 20 seconds every time we come in contact with something outside our house or every time we leave our house. We are waiting to go to the diner and sit and catch up with friends and family. We are tired of waiting for a treatment and vaccine. But like my poppy. It isn’t time yet.

           And so we wait.

In some ways we are like Noah, his family and the animals on the ark. But which part of the story are we in? Are we in the first part where we are in the ark and it’s raining, and raining, and raining. 40 days of raining. Or are we in the part of the story where the waters have started to recede. And so Noah starts to release birds to see if there is a place to land. He sends out a raven, but it just flies to and fro. He then sends out a dove, but there was no place for the dove to land and it returns. Then he waits seven days and send the dove out again. The dove returns with a branch.

¹²Then he waited another seven days, and sent out the dove; and it did not return to him any more. ¹³ In the six hundred and first year, in the first month, on the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from the earth; and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and saw that the face of the ground was drying. ¹⁴In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry.

We are waiting for the land to dry. And it will be a while, a long while before we will see the dry land and exit the ark. To be safe, we need to be patient and wait. We need to trust that in time the land will dry and the rainbow will return. But until then we need to be cautious and safe. We need to wash our hands, wear face-masks, and stay home as much as possible. This is hard. We see people without mask. We see people having parties with friends. We see people in restaurants, and beauty shops, and beaches. And we want to do that too. But we need to wait.

Waiting with and for you.

This showed up this morning, after I had written this post for my newsletter.