Waiting is something we spend a lot of time doing. Right now many of us are waiting for spring - grateful, perhaps, for a week without rain and with a little sunshine and warmth.

Three months ago we were waiting for Christmas, then New Year, then Valentine’s Day, and now Easter.

But wait. Isn’t there a danger in all this waiting? Are we at risk of missing the things we’re not waiting for — the extraordinary ordinary day-to-day moments? Meeting a friend by chance on the high street. Noticing crocuses by the car park. Sunlight in the market on a Saturday morning. A cup of tea right when you need it. A good book.

Even if the thing we’re waiting for is not exciting, not fuelled by fireworks or chocolate, if it’s results or outcomes that might shape the next year, the next job or even the rest of life, there is still the risk of missing the comfort of those extraordinary ordinary things.

Waiting well takes patience. Waiting well for Christmas takes the patient quietness of Advent; waiting well for Easter takes the open discipline of Lent. If firework-fuelled, wine-determined New Year’s resolutions have failed, then perhaps the very absence of excitement that marks Lent - a time for reflection, for restraint, for listening and opening ourselves to God and our neighbours - can prepare us.

It can steady us for the amazing, abundant, grace-filled renewing of Easter: an earned rebirth into the new self we resolved, perhaps unrealistically, to step into during the darkest days of the year.

And when waiting is hard, when there is nothing we can do, when the space between us and an outcome is filled with fear, if we stop and look, see and feel, there is a companion always ready, always understanding, always holding.

There is always God.