An interesting phenomenon happens when you‘re waiting: You have time on your hands. Your mind feels a bit scattered, you're fidgety and you've run out of things to say. Which may explain why I have an album created on my phone called: Waiting Rooms.
It's strange, I know. But when you're sitting for hours, you start to do things like take pictures of waiting rooms and go so far as to organize an album on your phone.
Over the last year or so, the reality is many of my days were taken up with sitting in waiting rooms. This happened in large part due to my mother's diagnosis of cancer, but also because of other health issues going on in the family and then the added "just checkups" at both the dentist and doctor's. I ended up in so many waiting rooms, I could write a book about it. Or, more importantly, write a training guide on How to Use Waiting Room Coffee Makers.
So, to entertain myself, I started a Waiting Room photo album.
I started to notice the chairs. They're usually some form of synthetic plastic-y fabric in order to wash easily and wipe away the fact that you and your germs were ever there. Ew, David.
I started to notice the people. Some obviously well-to-do (yes, I judge by the shoes they're wearing), and some obviously not so well-to-do.
I started to specifically notice the doctor's patients. Some - by all appearances - seemingly healthy, and some struggling in a very obvious, physical way.
But mostly, I noticed the walls.
Beige.
Benign.
Bland.
It's like the walls breathed up all the underlying emotions in the room and became so overwhelmed, they just: Blanked.
Like the walls were saying to us, "I make no promises. It might be bad news, it might be good." *shrug*
_________________________
I couldn't help but think of my waiting room album today because between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, I imagine a universal waiting room. A holding of breath, a nervous anticipation, doubting the promise that was made, hoping there's an answer. Wondering what that answer will be. A fidgety, anxious sadness permeating the air.
The people and their differences in appearance, gender, physical health, material wealth made equal because they are all sitting with the same need and the same desire for the answer to their waiting.
But today, from where we sit in history, looking back on this Saturday before Easter?
It seems as though this waiting room's walls are different: Bright, cheerful, encouraging, full of color, full of light. Full of glimpses of hope. Glimpses of God and how He's working in the lives of the patients. Can you see them? Yes, we are still waiting. But this waiting is different. This waiting holds guaranteed results and answers to our diagnosis.
Because this waiting room holds the reality of a promise of a Truth that made - and WILL MAKE - itself evident:
He is Risen.
You are healed.
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