Learning To Wait

The below quote is from one of my spiritual heroes, Howard Thurman. He gives insightful commentary on the purpose of spiritual disciplines, like prayer, and how they teach us how to wait and prepare ourselves for the moments when we encounter God. As a note, by religious experience, he means our life of faith which includes moments of encounter with God’s Presence.

In the total religious experience we learn how to wait; we learn how to ready the mind and the spirit. It is in the waiting, brooding, lingering, tarrying timeless moments that the essence of the religious experience becomes most fruitful. It is here that I learn to listen, to swing wide the very doors of my being, to clean out the corners and the crevices of my life—so that when His Presence invades, I am free to enjoy His coming to Himself in me. . . .