One of my sisters sent me this clip of a song called Wait for the Lord. It’s in the Taizé style, which is to say that the message is repeated. One can become impatient with that, but I think that repetition is its power.
Wait for the Lord
Whose day is near
Wait for the Lord
Keep watch, take heart
And it’s sometimes an impatient wait. O Come, O Come Emmanuel – Tarja.
One of the lesser-known Beatles songs, from Rubber Soul, is Wait.
It’s been a long time
Now I’m coming back home
I’ve been away now
Oh how I’ve been alone
Wait ’til I come back to your side
We’ll forget the tears we’ve cried
Perhaps the best cover version of a Rolling Stones song is I Am Waiting by Ollabelle. The group features Amy Helm, the daughter of the late vocalist of the Band, Levon Helm.
You can’t hold out, you can’t hold out, oh yeah, oh yeah
Waiting for someone to come out of somewhere
Waiting for someone to come out of somewhere
See it come along, don’t know where it’s from
Oh, yes, you will find out
Happens all the time, censored from our mind
You’ll find out.
Norah Jones sang Christmas Don’t Be Late on CBS Saturday Morning recently. Not much like Simon, Theodore, Alvin, and Dave Seville.
Tommy Pett
And of course, The Waiting by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers:
The waiting is the hardest part
Every day you see one more card
You take it on faith, you take it to the heart
This, not incidentally, is the first song on Unconventional Advent (A Think Christian playlist) on Spotify.
I’ve said it before. I do think the waiting IS the hardest part.
It might be waiting for Christmas: the presents, the festivities, family gatherings. Or it may be that you’re waiting for it to be over: the pain, the sense of loss, family gatherings.
Perhaps it’s the end of 2021, which might have been better than 2020, but not as good as you had hoped.
Here’s hoping that what you are waiting for, whatever that might be, comes your way.