The crescendo

I took my last flight to Chicago yesterday morning. From now on, most of the time at least, I'll be driving back. It's a big deal, and I'm excited to have a car. But there's a certain ease and peace about flying -- putting responsibility in someone else's hands for a change. It's just me on that plane. No cell phone. No internet. Not even anyone I know. Just me, the airplane magazine and the little bag of peanuts. It's a gift.

Today in church, the minister preached about God's timing. 420 years took place between the promise made at the end of the Old Testament and the fulfillment of it in the New Testament. Just before God's about to do something huge, something eart-shattering, something utterly fabulous . . . there's nothing. That pattern is repeated over and over in the Bible. The minister called it the crescendo, the building up and building up and building up, just before the most beautiful part of all. It's the pause, the sheer nothingness, that makes us anticipate and appreciate what is to come, that much more. It's that part before the last syllable in the Hallelujah Chorus, that little pause that stops us in our tracks and fills us with awe.

So what am I waiting for? Many things. We're all waiting for many things. But maybe it's in the waiting that we find the real reward . . .