Waiting Games

Friends know that I used to play chess competitively. You want to know what the most stressful part of chess was? It was waiting. Probably not the waiting a non-player associated chess with. There is never a dull moment in competitive and tournament chess, especially when you have $100,000 on the line. There are lots of things to wait for. You wait to see who will make the first mistake. You wait for your opponent to fall for your trap. You wait for your enemies time to run out so you can claim a victory. You wait for your opponents next move after calculating seven moves deep in seven different variations for his most likely seven moves (343 different positions total), only to be surprised by a novel move, trashing the time you spent crunching moves in your mind. It's a lot. It is this waiting period that really wears a player out. Well, wore me out at least. 

It's a power play. In life as it is in chess. It's a demonstration of power that we can make people wait on us. We wait on important people, because we eagerly want something they can provide. The next step in a game, some critical information, some type of prestige, something. We wait for a green light, because the lights have authority behind them. We wait on car mechanics because they have the power to take care of our cars. Can you imagine a man proposing to a woman, and she told him to wait for an answer? Can you imagine the weight bearing on a mans soul as he waits in a hospital lobby, anticipating what the outcome of his daughters surgery will be, as every second pounds through his veins? It's a lot. 

Cheers to the day when Christ returns, history is over, and we don't have to wait for anything anymore.