WAIT A MINUTE
When I open up my phone, sometimes I’ll find myself on a screen of “widgets” — little quick-look interactive previews of news headlines, my step-count, to-do lists, whatever’s up-next on my podcasts… stuff like that. I don’t think I ever set this up. I’m pretty sure it’s still on the operating system’s default setting. For me, it’s not especially helpful. In fact, usually I’m irritated with it, because on the rare occasions that I’m trying to find the screen, I can’t.
It’s kind of a nice surprise, sometimes, when it includes a smattering of photos from my sprawling albums. The ones that pop up always seem totally random, careening wildly all over the place, from hither and yon in my digital life. Here’s a selfie at the zoo eight years ago. And a production still from 2006. There’s a menu from 2014 that I thought I’d want to remember. Here, have another gander at this morning glory from who-knows-when.
If the images are being curated by AI, then I really don’t understand how that intelligence works, because they appear to be totally arbitrary. Out of the 46,326 pictures that I’ve got stored the cloud, my phone might decide to show me the one photo I have of my niece’s ex-ex-boyfriend, a picture that I’d probably delete if I could be bothered to find it again.
Sometimes, though, they make me think. The erratic emergence of faces and places, memories and ideas can be dream-like. A cartoon that I saved and forgot about might reappear at the perfect time to illustrate a point I want to make. The smile of a friend from way back will prompt me to send a quick note to let her know I’m thinking about her.
This week, it was a shot of a plaque at Joshua Tree National Park, from a vacation in 2018. It inspired me to revisit the entire album from that day.
Travis and I had taken a short hike. We made our way amidst giant granite boulders and strangely beautiful flora to a dam and pond that had been built by ranchers to water their cattle in this arid environment in the late-19th century. Along the path, there were a number of plaques describing geology and wildlife. I’m not sure why, but I took photos of all of them. One — the one that popped up on my phone this week — described the “wait-a-minute” bush, cautioning that visitors who stray from the path could find themselves stuck by its nasty thorns.
I was pretty charmed, then and now, by the idea of a “wait-a-minute” bush. The shrub has an actual scientific name, but all of its common sobriquets are great — cat claw, devil’s blanket, wait-a-bit. Every one of them practically begs to be a sermon title.
So, at first, I thought I’d talk about how life so often snags us with a “wait a minute.” Sometimes just to make us stop and pay attention. Maybe to get us back on our path. Or perhaps to steer us in an entirely different direction. I thought about how, usually, when I get caught by a sticker or thorn like this, my first reaction is, “Oh hell! Something’s gone wrong…” But how, then, if I wait a minute, and give it some thought, and assign it some meaning, I can usually make empowering sense out of the situation. With intention, I can claim a silver lining; I can turn lemons into lemonade.
What I’m thinking about now, though, is the fact that the reason life gives us lemons is not just so that we can make lemonade, but because lemons are amazing and wonderful things to begin with.
Maybe wait-a-minute bushes aren’t merely things we’re supposed to interpret into a life lesson, or heed as a warning, or even use as signs to guide our way. Maybe wait-a-minute bushes are, in and of themselves, valuable and perfect just for being what they are. Clearly, the shrubs are an essential part of the interconnected ecosystem in which we were walking. Perhaps the same could be said of all of the snags and tears and owwies we all encounter everywhere we go.
Our journey can’t be only about avoiding the discomforts, avoiding the cat claws and devil’s blankets in life. But neither does it have to be about making sense of every danged thing. Or about giving everything some kind of positive spin to make it okay.
It’s already okay. AND sometimes we get poked, or stuck, or lost, or hurt. That’s part of our ecosystem. That’s part of life’s complex beauty.
Not “wait a minute, something’s wrong,” not “wait a minute, we need to figure this out,” not “wait a minute, what is the universe telling me?” But simply: wait a minute, here we are, and how beautiful this is.
I can’t wait to be with you this Sunday, June 1, at 10:00am. I’m delighted that we’ll have special music by Brian Malone and Sasha Menendez! XO, Drew
©2025 Drew Groves
