Of Bears and Penguins

A couple of nights this past week, I've woken up at 3 a.m. on the nose - once after an incredibly bizarre nightmare in which I was in a Civil War battle with minnie balls flying all about my ears, thanks sub-conscious.

But I digress. Each time to my mind has flown from the reaches of my memory the snatches of a prayer from the Book of Common Prayer:

"Be with those who watch and wait this night..."

At any given moment, I wonder how many people on this madly spinning globe are experiencing what they might call, "the worst time of their life"? How many are watching and waiting through a dark and chilly night?

Certainly more than anyone should like to think. How much compassion we need, what great tenderness we need.

For there are those this week who have borne the news of death.

And those who have borne the diagnosis of illness.

Ones who have been physically wounded.

Others who bear loss of many different sorts.

We who mourn and sorrow are never alone, in our suffering we enter a dark fraternity where choices must be made about how we shall watch and wait, how we shall endure the darkness of night.

I think of how I come to the feasting table of Lamb, to the communion rail - there I see part of what it means to wait upon the Lord.

We wait with our hands open, don't we. Hands open to receive the bread and the cup through which we are fed in grace.

And decorum insists that we wait patiently, for the meal must be served appropriately - the words spoken to each who comes to receive: "The body of Christ, the bread of heaven, the blood of Christ, the cup of salvation."

I humbly admit that I'm not great at being patient, and there are some days when I think of throwing sharp elbows to reach the table first, so hungry am I for the grace of Christ.

But that's not the way of the Lamb is it?

Not at all, no preference is given to those who get there first or last. To each is given grace in its proper time and into open and waiting hands.

The grace always comes, even if you're the very last one at the rail, but it comes in God's proper time.

I am beginning to understand that in a very small and humble measure, and that in itself is part of God's grace to me.