"As we grow in our relationship with God, we begin to understand how the revelation of God's word is gradual. However, when we first start out on the spiritual way, we often suffer from impatience. We want things quickly, immediately. This is particularly true in the computer age, as ever faster and more efficient computer systems condition us to instant responses. Electronic communications — beepers, cellular phones, E-mail, voice mail, faxes — provide worldwide access at the touch of a keypad. It's not surprising, therefore, that we experience waiting, which is a requirement of spiritual growth, as a form of testing and trial. We want to actively storm the heavens rather than grow slowly in our openness toward, and trust in, God.
"Patience, the capacity to wait, is a quality too little valued in our society. The rabbis expressed the importance of waiting in Pirkei Avot where they wrote that we had to wait until we were forty years old before studying the Zohar, the central Jewish mystical text. Before that age, they argued, the guidance offered in the text would have no meaning for us. In fact, it could lead us astray and sever us from our spiritual moorings.
"Illness is one context in which we begin to understand waiting. In hospitals and medical centers, we get treated, we get 'done to,' we become objects of decision making by others. Exercising patience means depending on factors not controlled by our own efforts and initiative. Loving also teaches us patience. When we are in love, we place our greatest interest into the hands of another. We wait for the phone call, the letter, or just the smile that affirms love. Waiting is directly connected to caring, to finding that things matter. When we care about something important to us, we are willing to wait — and we do so with a calming anticipation.
"When we love God, we are presented with many occasions to wait. The seeker can expect from the spiritual guide support through periods of uncertainty, encouragement to endure them, and help learning how to wait. Sometimes seekers feel as if they are being pushed in one direction and pulled in the other. The Hebrew folk expression yihyeh tov (literally, it will be for good) is a salutary reminder that the story is not yet complete.
What is at stake in the spiritual life is an intimate relationship with God. But our most significant relationships are not characterized by instant intimacy. Rather, they grow over time as shared history, memories, and trust accumulate, as misunderstandings are corrected, and as we effect some genuine change in ourselves. What is true in our human relationships is also true in our relationship with God. Long after we can name the desire to grow closer to God, we still have to discover what that may mean, what it may require, how we will have to be changed. So we feel pulled toward God even as we learn, with the spiritual guide's assistance, 'Do not wake or rouse Love until it please!' (Song of Songs 2:7)".