Waiting

Waiting is really, really hard. Waiting for dinner, for Christmas, for summer, for healing, for love, for answers. Most people aren't very good at waiting. Now, I'm doing some of the hardest waiting I have ever done as I wait to hear whether I will be appointed as a United Methodist pastor starting in July, or not. What I have been thinking and praying about and preparing for, for over three years now, might happen in July. Or it might not. And the waiting is painful.
I don't think this is unique to Methodists in the itinerancy-- I'm pretty sure this anxious, exciting, terrifying waiting is something nearly everyone has to do at some point. 
But here is my consolation this Holy Week. Jesus knows what it's like to wait on pins and needles. How must he have felt on Palm Sunday, waiting, waiting for the cross? I don't think he knew exactly what he was getting into. Yes, the gospels tell us Jesus predicted the cross, and that he knew one of his best friends would betray him. But did Jesus know exactly how it would feel to take on all the principalities and powers, all the sins of everyone who ever lived, on himself on the cross? I doubt it. I wonder if Jesus struggled to get to sleep a few nights of Holy Week, puzzling over what exactly was going to happen. 
But I know the nights I struggle to sleep, my mind racing with possibilities and questions, Jesus is right there beside me. Jesus knows, knows it altogether, as Psalm 139 says. He knows the stuckness of waiting for Good Friday and for Easter. He's been in the wilderness too.
This Holy Week, I pray that everyone who is waiting will be able to wait beside Jesus for the coming victory of God, in whatever form it will come.