Waiting: Our least favorite thing

A couple years back my husband and I were sitting in a boarding area at the Newark airport on our way home to Ohio from a visit to Cameroon, West Africa. We had just gone through two weeks of pretty rough travel (by our standards) involving hours bouncing in buses and taxis, random military checkpoints, and routine and unexplained three-hour delays. I reached a particularly low point after about ten hours on a bus, my legs crammed sideways against the floorboards behind the driver's seat. Then a lady got on, squeezing her ample body into the front row of seats beside me, and put a sack of cooked cassava in front of me. I crimped myself up a little more to make room, feeling my muscles ache and twitch, and then the smell from her sack wafted up to my nose. I don't want to disparage this woman's cooking, but to me it smelled like warm feet. At that point, all I wanted to do was arrive at our destination, and failing that, curl up into the fetal position and cry. Luckily for me, I was already pretty much in the fetal position. I stared out the bus window at the blur of palm trees and mud brick houses, and I asked myself: How much longer can I wait?

Now, our journey was almost done. Our two children were waiting for us at home, and we only had one more flight to board before hugging and kissing them. But first we had to wait some more. It turned out that our flight was delayed--for eight hours. As the time wore on, my fellow travelers began to mutter. One particular woman, who earlier had been talking about her faith in Jesus, now began cursing and complaining to anyone who would listen. She berated the airline and the airport for their incompetence and began punching buttons into her Blackberry, calling her colleagues and friends to invite them to share in her misery.

It's pretty clear we Americans don't like waiting. But most of the time, waiting is just an inconvenience. Waiting for what we want--to reach a destination, to see a loved one, to pay for the pack of toilet paper--will not prove life-threatening. But for 884 million people on this planet, right now, waiting is a life-threatening activity. These are the people who are still waiting for access to a safe supply of water. In a world where some of us fly on airplanes and have $200/month cell phone plans, there are others for whom a cup of disease-free water is out of reach.

Next time I find myself being forced to wait for something inconsequential, I want to stop and pray for those who are waiting too--for life, health, and dignity itself. Maybe you can join me.