Wait

Waiting is rarely fun.

Waiting happens all day long: at traffic lights, in checkout lines, waiting for lunch breaks, waiting for phone calls, waiting for dinner to cook, waiting for the bathroom to be free.  Wait, wait, wait.

While these may appear to be quite menial things to wait for, waiting in itself is one of those obscurities of life that blossoms with beauty once it is over.  Young children wait many weeks for their birthdays to arrive.  The countdown begins months before the date and when the fateful day arrives their excitement cannot be contained.  The beautiful look of pure elation on their face when they wake up a year older than before, when there’s presents and siblings are required to be perpetually nice to them, that is a picture of why waiting can be so wonderful.

Delayed gratification is something many 21st century adults misunderstand.  In a society saturated in instant knowledge and communication, something that takes time is rarely considered special, but on the contrary: inconvenient and worthy of being discarded.  Perhaps this is not how it ought to be.

Something that has been waited for, something that has been desired for so long, produces so much more gratification in an individual.  Not because it is more elaborate, but indeed, because it has been delayed.

A portion of time can create so much meaning and wonder in a single moment.  Waiting.  That is beautiful.

 

Words: Part 1

Good.

A word so commonly used, but so frequently stripped of its correct definition.  The 1998 edition of the Macquarie Study Dictionary ascribes 31 different definitions to the word “good”.  One for every Baskin Robbins ice cream flavour.

Good is equated with words of the same calibre as excellent, proper, righteous, honourable, worthy, reliable, beautiful, agreeable and sufficient.  All too frequently it is demoted to the same status as ‘okay’: all right, correct.  How incorrect the English-speaking world has become.

God is good.  And in the first chapter of Genesis, He proclaims that what He has created is good.  Galatians encourages us that we as humans can possess goodness, as it is a fruit of the Spirit.  So ‘good’ is quite possibly not the mediocre adjective it is often perceived as.

A blazing sunset filled with the vibrant hues of majesty itself is good.  So the next time someone says, “Good job,” I look forward to comparing that to the sunset and to others of God’s handiwork.  I refuse to keep using ‘good’ in place of ‘okay’, to describe something that was merely acceptable.  If it is good, that’s good.

God is good.  It’s His word.  The evolution of language will not rob Him of it.