as I have loved you
I wait for an hour to speak to someone in customer service, my phone on endless hold, that looping tinny music interspersed with your call is important to us messages playing in the background as I work while also, I am queued online for a chat window. When I clicked the button to chat with an online representative immediately, I was number 248 in line.
I sigh. I rattle my chipped, uneven fingernails against the edge of my desk, thinking, I do not have time for this foolishness.
The longer this drags on, the more I find myself wandering out to the far reaches of the internet, reading Reddit threads about how no one really cares anymore about customer service, how this company has clearly undervalued customer relations as a budgetary line item, how probably—we are all, after all, speculating, since no one seems to be able to get through—they have outsourced to some distant foreign closet what could arguably be one of their most important chances to cultivate residual sales. Anyway, so many words, all amounting to they don’t care, they don’t care, they don’t care, which seems to be the rampant pandemic of 2025, the scourge currently sweeping the world, this lack of care, sparking anger that flares up like a fever, making us want to mask up and wash our hands of everything.
Meanwhile, as the tinny music carries on, I feel again a lowly, gentle tug to apply Christ to my current context.
Umm, okay. Admittedly, I struggle to imagine Jesus sitting here in this queue, adrift and waiting—maybe for help that will never come–with all the rest of us. And yet, He’s always with me, which means He’s also here.
I click back to the chat window, which says, you are now number 247, 246, 245, 244, 243… You are now number 243 in line, and I wonder whether five people have now at last gotten the opportunity to chat or if five just gave up on waiting. Those numbers seemed to melt away rather quickly.
Years ago, back in my teenaged days, I had a friend who worked summers at Disney World. He used to laugh about pranking people in the park, how he and his coworkers would start lines at random locked doors leading nowhere. In minutes, these lines would grow into snaking trails of people, and then my friend and his friends would pretend to give up, would leave the line, sauntering away, muttering about the wait.
I can’t help it; I keep wondering if we are all just standing at locked doors today, just holding in the queue for nothing, if someone forgot to put a we’re sorry, but there’s no one to assist you message on the answering machine.
Admittedly, I can’t really recollect a passage from the gospel accounts about Jesus waiting in exactly this way for other people who are slow to respond and help, although He did tell some teaching stories about staying alert while waiting (for Him), and He did, from time to time, have to wait a few days before acting. For the last few days, in fact, I have been waiting with Him, sitting breathlessly beside Him in one of these latter times, in the last hours before He went to the cross. Of course, I really mean I’ve been sitting at His feet, dwelling in scriptural accounts, watching and listening to how He lived this human life.
The music pauses a moment on the phone, like it does when someone picks up, and I’m briefly hopeful until the recorded voice repeats, thank you for holding; your call is very important to us. I sigh again, because that doesn’t seem to be anywhere close to the truth.
You can admit it maybe, that you are already weary of being on hold with me, and you have only just joined the queue.
What is Jesus doing in the holy pause of those last hours as the time comes for what He calls the time of His glorification? Not pausing, not really, and He’s definitely not preoccupied with Himself. Instead, He’s loving them to the end, only sponging dirty water from dusty toes, only handing bread across the table to the man who will soon betray Him, only lowly loving the people—His heart heavy with knowing it—who will give up on waiting with Him for the restoration of everything. Who does that except for Him? And then after all this, He says, a new command I give to you…as I have loved you, so must you love one another.
As I have loved you.
In other words, while you’re in the weary waiting, the terrified trouble, apply Christ.
More than an invitation or a suggestion, it is a command rearticulated, something He made all new. As I have loved you, so must you love.
The music on the phone, sounding like a toddler with a xylophone, plays on. I am now number 198 in the chat window queue.
And I am thinking about how many times a day I give thanks for God’s patience with me, how long it’s been that I’ve been longing to love as He does and failing at it. Meanwhile, as He waits with me, as He waits on me to respond with my yielding, as He keeps touching my eyes and my heart, He’s only showing me more ways He loves me. So, it’s less that I’m caught up in self-condemnation and more that I’m captivated by Him, and so, I long to be like Him.
As I have loved you.
Now, this is something I know, how He’s loved me.
He’s applied grace and compassion and mercy and forgiveness to me, has bent Himself into the dust below my low to carry me and cleanse me; has guarded me with His peace and given me Himself. He’s never left me, never condemned me, never given up on me. He went right down into death, in fact, to retrieve me, even though He knew it would cost Him everything, even though He knew my gain would be His loss.
As I have loved you.
I’ve a good mind to give whoever answers–if anyone ever answers–the customer service line a piece of my mind. This is ridiculous, really, this farse that passes for customer care, and businesses would do well to take care to care, and anyway, is there only one person working the phones and the online chat?
But how is it having a good mind to give a piece of my mind when Jesus is clear that out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks? Isn’t it a piece of my heart I’m really passing out here, no matter what it is I’m saying? And what does a real tearing down really do except show how truly ripped up I am?
As I have loved you, you must love.
It’s my freedom, really, instead of showing myself to show how well He loves.
I can’t really ever remember a time Jesus dressed me down, because all this time, seems like He’s only been covering over my sin with His love. Seems like He’s only wrapped up my naked shoulders in robes of His own righteousness, and honestly, I haven’t done anything to deserve that.
Wouldn’t you know it, but the chat window would be the space that comes available to me first, in this virtual world where these days we’re virtually loving and virtually giving and virtually proclaiming everything out loud? Sometimes I wonder when the word virtual stopped meaning kinda-but-not-really.
I hang up the phone, which notes that I’ve been on hold now for an hour and twenty minutes.
The invisible customer service agent types, hello! my name is Anya, and I’m thinking how much easier it is, especially in a digital space, to wonder if Anya is a person at all. Or, is this really just any artificial attempt to arbitrate justifiable anger?
I had prepopulated the answer field in the box with my problem, and so, it’s easy to answer the query, how can I help you today, with a few abrupt sentences.
I understand. Wait a moment while I check for you, Anya types.
No, I will not, I want to type, but I stay my hand and wait, and as the minutes tick by, it’s back to this: as I have loved you…
Okay, but how do I do that, especially here, with a virtual person?
I want to know, and so I sit back and ask, and soon, I find myself praying over how hard it must be, if Anya is a real Anya, to be Anya all day, to start conversations with hundreds of people who want to give you only a rotten old part of their heart because they’re broken and tired and have been waiting so long. I find myself asking for peace for someone who may or not actually be a someone, but who, if she is, probably just works for this company handling problems she didn’t actually create herself.
I find myself remembering what a sister friend of mine always tells her grown up sons and daughter about these situations, that they don’t have to be frustrated with the person they’ve reached for help, that they are free to believe the person helping really wants to help, and to calmly receive whatever help is offered. Then, if need be, they are also free to ask for additional help from someone who has more authority to apply to their circumstances. I smile remembering what she’s shared about this, because isn’t that actually what’s happening right now, as I wait for Anya’s reply and pray, practicing my freedom to ask Jesus exactly how to extend His love? Always, I have the greatest authority to which I can appeal, and while I wait, surely there’s some way to apply Christ, that is, to love as He has loved me.
Oh, the help I’ve received without myself being the least bit helpful!
My fingers hover over the keyboard, that empty space still looking like nothing more than an impersonal void, and I begin again, because the truth is, I’ve been set free to do just that.
Anya, thank you for your help.
