Whether we are waiting for a job, exam results, a spouse, or a physical healing, waiting can be a difficult time if our life feels on hold and our future seems to be in the hands of others, or of circumstances. 

On the other hand, waiting can be a period of spiritual preparation, of eliminating obstacles and clearing the path ahead. The way we wait can facilitate how we go forward.  

Impatience, anxiety, fear—these are like stones scattered on our path, impeding advancement. The difference between passive or anxious waiting and active spiritual expectation is determined by our perception of what has authority to govern our lives.

A Bible story illustrating this un­folds by a pool where a man who had an affliction for 38 years waited (see John 5:2–14), along with other sick and disabled people, for the moving of the water, when it was believed “an angel went down … into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.”

When Christ Jesus asked the man, “Wilt thou be made whole?” the man answered, “I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me.” To the man’s thinking, his fate depended on someone else acting on his behalf so he might slip through a narrow window of opportunity. For him, waiting was resignation, with a dim hope that one day he might beat the odds. With this attitude he had waited for nearly four decades.

Is that the kind of waiting we’re doing—waiting for someone else to act, studying the odds, accepting limited prospects? The limitations we see may even be confirmed by statistics and data. We’re told just ten percent of applicants get into the university they want to attend, or unemployment rates are rising in a particular field. There are also medical statistics. Material data may seem to confirm material conditions, but the whole picture misrepresents our prospects for progress and healing.

Is that the kind of waiting we’re doing—waiting for someone else to act, studying the odds, accepting limited prospects?

When Jesus was presented with the conditions for healing at the pool of Bethesda, he didn’t rush the man into the water before everyone else. He didn’t put the man into the water at all. Instead he instructed him, “Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.”

Operating under spiritual rather than material law, Jesus claimed the initiative. He knew that spiritual law maintains man as healthy and active, reflecting God’s being. He demonstrated the present power of God: “And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked.” Later in the temple, Jesus set forth the important need for the man to live in harmony with this spiritual law when he admonished, “Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more.” 

Jesus healed instantaneously. Our own healings can be instantaneous, too, but they may sometimes come more slowly. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, counsels in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “Wait patiently for divine Love to move upon the waters of mortal mind, and form the perfect concept. Patience must ‘have her perfect work’ ” (p. 454).

If we don’t immediately see an outcome—a relationship, a job, a physical healing—we can still rely on the truth of our unbroken identity as God’s reflection. Because we don’t see a seed growing beneath the earth, that doesn’t mean growth isn’t occurring. Similarly, we can be assured that spiritual reality, the truth of being, is impelling our progress. It’s the Christ, changing our thought. Waiting can be the time when thought is awakening and turning Spiritward.

“When we wait patiently on God and seek Truth righteously, He directs our path,” Mrs. Eddy assures us in Science and Health (p. 254). As we look beyond the immediate object we’re waiting for—the job, the relationship, the physical healing—and focus on deepening our understanding of God, we find patience replacing impatience, love dissolving ego and self-will, and hope supplanting fear. The unfoldment in our thinking is evidence of God’s presence. The outcome is healing.

A young athlete I know, a Christian Scientist, had worked for years in the hope of competing in the Olympic games. He’d faced physical injuries, and through prayer and Christian Science treatment, he’d always been healed. However, right before the final qualifying tournaments, he was seriously injured, and he was not successful in securing a place.

For a period, the disappointment was great. The temptation was to fear that all the work and all the waiting had been for nothing. However, he quickly returned to his spiritually poised thought. He knew that he had done everything he could to that point, and he was grateful for the experiences he’d had. He acknowledged that wherever he was, whatever he was doing, he was expressing God’s qualities, and therefore he could not be outside of good and opportunity. He and his coach saw an additional avenue to try. Though there was no assurance he would be successful, he continued training, confident that he could only be in his right place.

If we don’t immediately see an outcome, we can still rely on the truth of our unbroken identity as God’s reflection.

Many weeks passed, and then one day he received a call telling him that because of the quality of his performance in the other tournaments and in the years before, he’d been given a wild card to compete in the Olympic games. Needless to say, he was thrilled—and he was ready because he had continued to train. But most of all, he took forward the important lesson that waiting was never about achieving good just around the corner or subject to conditions, but about the present acknowledgement and activity of good always at hand. He had a complete physical healing too and competed with joy in the Olympic games. 

We often achieve the human goal we’re pursuing, but sometimes we may not. The same athlete was not successful eight years later in his Olympic bid, but he understood that the pursuit of excellence and the expression of sportsmanship were not limited to one venue, but part of demonstrating his spiritual selfhood. He was grateful for the growth that had come, even if it did not result in the desired goal. He trained with full heart and cheered others with enthusiasm at the games.

When our goals are elevated to a spiritual pursuit, we can be assured of achieving them, because we are assured of spiritual progress. But this doesn’t mean our human goals always unfold in the way or at the time we plan. For example, when a relationship is seen as an opportunity to express love and to recognize oneself as loved, then opportunities to share joy and give unselfishly come our way, whether in the person of a spouse or other companionship. What we can be certain of is love expanding in our consciousness and in our experience.

The acknowledgment of present good opens up our thought to the ideas we need. Even when obstacles appear, the affirmation that spiritual law is governing our lives allows us to await, with confidence, the blessing.