I’ve always been fascinated by advent. I love that we have an entire season in the church calendar devoted to waiting. This year I really wanted to reflect on it more, so I decided to set myself the challenge of taking a photo every day in December until Christmas, that made me think of waiting. These were often boring, mundane moments of my daily life, but through it I learned so much more about what it means to wait. I’ve written before about waiting so I won’t say much more, but below are all the images, and below that, my listed thoughts of what each one taught me. Do feel free to download and use them if they’re useful – you should be able to do so through my Flickr page.
We wait all the time.
We wait to be taken somewhere new.
Sometimes, it’s worth the wait.
Some waits are short waits.
Waiting makes the end result better.
Some waits remind us of other waits.
Some waits feel longer than others.
Sometimes we’re not the only ones who are waiting.
We wait for black and white to be filled with colour.
Waiting is nearly always preparation for something.
Sometimes we need to create things that are important enough to wait for.
In the waiting there are always glimpses of what is coming. Sights, smells, sounds and tastes. Waiting can be beautiful if we choose to see them.
Sometimes when we stop and wait, we enable others to go.
Waiting is never forever.
Waiting can bring us rest. We can embrace that rest, or resent it.
Waiting is only a temporary stop. Don’t worry, you’ll go again soon.
In a waiting time new things grow, often in unexpected places.
Sometimes, others are waiting for us.
In a waiting time we can often go from serving, to being served.
When you wait, you start to notice the beauty in ordinary things.
Waiting can be a warning. It might not be safe to go yet.
Waiting times remind us that we’re often not in control.
Waiting time is never wasted time.
In a waiting time we learn to let go of the things we no longer need.
In any church, or communion, or community, you get a lot of different people. People who don’t all think the same things, people who disagree. There are divisions and differences and those things are painful and sometimes, unresolvable. That is really hard, and it costs us. We get wounded and cynical and we feel like giving up on church, yearning for our faith to be simple again. But in communion, we are reminded not of our divisions and differences, but of our commonality and unity. That whoever we are, whatever we think, in Christ we are part of one community, one Body, the Body of Christ. We belong, we are welcomed and we are loved.
This year I found all the old envelopes and it was amazing to look back at ten years of me – all my hopes, dreams, and disappointments. Every year it is such a profound and moving experience, and is one that I can’t recommend highly enough. So I thought I’d tell you about it.
There has also been a switch in priority for me. The first few years were all about the outcomes, the numbers, how many goals I could tick off and what number out of ten I had achieved. This year I didn’t even count the ones I had managed to do, but I reflected a lot around the person I had become, how I had grown and changed whilst trying to achieve those things. I don’t measure success now by my achievements, but in whether I am becoming more like the person I believe God wants me to be.
Pioneer ministry is a fairly new term within youth ministry but it’s important to mention it here because mistakes are inevitable in pioneering. Pioneer youth ministry is doing stuff that hasn’t been done before, carving out a new path that has never been walked. There is something essentially pioneering about all youth work, because every relationship you form is a new path, every individual you meet and work with will have totally different needs and responses compared to another. You are constantly pioneering, constantly guessing what will work and not work, what to say and not say, how this person will react to that. There are no maps, no senior workers to advise you or tell you about their mistakes so you don’t make the same ones. If it’s truly pioneering then trying it with a bit of guess work is the only way. Mistakes will be made, because they are the only way you can be lead to something that works, a path that’s walkable that others can follow. In his development of the lightbulb, Thomas Edison famously said, ‘If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward’. It is the destiny of a pioneer to find thousands of ways that don’t work, all so that they can be lead to the one way that will work. Your mistakes will always be the paving slabs the path leading to your successes is made from.
