Waiting in Lines

Guests at Manna House are always waiting when I arrive in the morning to unlock the gate.  I’m there to start the coffee.  They are waiting so that they can be first in line, or nearly so.  Montrell is the most faithful of these early morning “waiters.”  He is there almost every morning, and I think I have only arrived before him once or twice.

There is a lot of waiting in the Bible, and there is a lot of waiting in the lives of our guests.  Waiting requires hope.  Psalm 33, “Our soul is waiting for the Lord.  The Lord is our help and our shield.  In God do our hearts find joy.  We trust in God’s holy name.  May your love be upon us O Lord, as we place all our hope in you.”

            On the mornings I start the coffee, I usually get to Manna House around 6:40a.m. The guests who are already there are joined by others and they will form a line and keeping waiting until around 7:45a.m.  That’s the time when some of us volunteers will come out of the house to “take the list” for the day.  

Whoever will “work the list” that morning will write in a notebook the names of the guests who are signing up either for a shower or for “socks and hygiene.”  Imagine waiting an hour or more just to get on a list!  Once we open, guests will wait in the backyard for their names to be called.  From time to time the person “working the list” will be asked by a guest, “Where am I on the list?” 

            As the morning at Manna House goes forward, guests often have to wait to use the bathroom.  With the amount of coffee that is consumed, it is no surprise that the bathroom is needed early and often.   

            Away from Manna House, guests wait in line to enter soup kitchens and get a meal.  Guests wait in line to get into a night shelter.  Guests wait in line at the Social Security Office.  Guests wait at the Unemployment Office.  Guests wait in lines when there is an “employment fair.”  Guests wait in line at labor pools, hoping for a job. Guests “take a number” and wait at emergency rooms or at the pharmacy at the Med.  Guests even wait at jail.  There is a lot of waiting there; it takes five or six hours to get processed into the jail.  And, of course, they also wait to get out.  Waiting in all of these places can be a time of frustration or a time of hope. 

Sometimes it might be a bit of both.  The Book of Revelation describes the challenges disciples of Jesus faced in the Roman Empire (and we face in the U.S. Empire), and several times it urges endurance, “Here is a call for the endurance of the holy ones, those who keep the commandments of God and hold fast to the faith of Jesus” (Rev 14:12, see also Rev 1:9, 2:2, 19, 3:10, 13:10).  Paul and the early church like this  “endurance” word too, as he writes in his letter to the Romans that “endurance produces character, and character produces hope” (Romans 5:4, see also 2 Corinthians 6:4, Colossians 1:11, and Hebrews 10:36). 

For Revelation and for Paul, this endurance is sustained by an apocalyptic hope, not in the sense of awaiting the destruction of all, but in the sense of having a better world in view, in which we see “a new heaven and a new earth… the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God” (Rev 21:1-2).  In this apocalyptic hope we wait for that time when God will dwell among us, and God “will wipe every tear from [our] eyes.  Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more” (Rev 21:3-4).  This is the hope of the Beloved Community in which there will be no lines, and no waiting.

            We get a little taste of this Beloved Community each morning at Manna House as that first line our guests wait in to get on the list is transformed into our circle for prayer.  The line is no more as we open Manna House and we gather together to hold hands, guests and volunteers alike.  We welcome each other as we face each other.  God’s holy presence is felt as we reach out our hands to touch one another and be touched. God’s holy presence is felt in the breeze that reminds us of the Holy Spirit coming close to enliven us. 

Our prayer in this circle is outside the lines.  We envision and wait for a world in which everyone is housed, has health care, meaningful work with a living wage, food that is nourishing, and each person’s dignity is affirmed.  No more racism.  No more war.  No more poverty.  No more death penalty.  Meanwhile, we ask God to bless our coffee and make it hot, bless our sugar and make it sweet, and bless the creamer that it may take all life’s bitterness away.  “We trust in God’s holy name.  May your love be upon us O Lord, as we place all our hope in you.”