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The just one, because of his faith, shall live.

Estragon: Let's go.
Vladimir: We can't.
Estragon: Why not?
Vladimir: We're waiting for Godot . . .
Estragon: And if he doesn't come?
Vladimir: We'll come back to-morrow.
Estragon: And then the day after to-morrow?
Vladimir: Possibly.

Estragon and Vladimir are two middle-aged men who, in Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot seem to have spent every day of their lives by a rural roadside waiting for this character Godot to arrive. Now we human beings have ever tried to make sense of who we are and what this world is all about. To that end we have produced great myths, philosophical systems, scientific theories to explain it all. And for many people, one or another of such explanations may satisfy. But not Beckett. Like current postmodern theorists, Beckett wonders whether all our myths and theories may simply amount to games we play to deceive ourselves.

The fact is - from Beckett's point of view - we don't know where we came from nor what value a life can have that must end in death. And yet, erase all our discredited explanations, we still keep waiting for Godot; we retain within us this perpetual expectation for some meaningful answer - which expectation compels even Beckett to keep writing, to keep probing , despite his skepticism.

Throughout the play Vladimir and Estragon waver between hope and despair and otherwise behave the way we all do during this interval between birth and death. They eat, they argue, they get involved in long discussions about discrepancies in the Bible. They focus (as scientists do) upon specific objects like a shoe, a tree. When a passing blind man collapses in front of them, they discuss endlessly what they should do about it (the way Congress endlessly discusses whether or not people should be guaranteed health care). Vladimir concludes by saying, "Let us do something, while we have the chance. It is not everyday that we are needed . . . Let us represent worthily for once the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us!" Mutual compassion and assistance are at least a wholesome way to pass the time!

But then there is this boy who twice arrives from off stage to keep their hopes alive. He always comes with a message from Godot, never very elaborate but simply:
"Mr. Godot told me to tell you he won't come this evening but surely tomorrow." And so as the sun sets for the billionth time, they and the human race wait. They may want really to go, to leave this planetary stage they're on, to say to hell with this crazy waiting game called life. Indeed, the play's dialogue ends with Vladimir saying, "Well? Shall we go? " to which Estragon says, "Yes, let's go." But as the final curtain falls, the stage directions say: They do not move . Expectation remains a perpetual human obsession.

As believers we think otherwise. We consider expectation to be the very capacity that makes us human, hopeful; nor have our hopes been disappointed, for in Christ we have experienced that ultimate messenger from Godot who is Godot himself! - a messenger to whom, if he were to ask me "Do you, too, want to go? " I would simply have to reply: "Lord, to whom shall I go? You have the words of eternal life. "

-- Geoff Wood