Waiting

The Bible is filled with examples of waiting, but that theme is not reflected in the beginning of the first book of the Bible. God speaks and His will is accomplished. But after the introduction of sin and the fall of man, there is now the loss of the eternal to be replaced by the introduction of Time. Which is why I believe one of the few things that remains unchanged from God's original creation is His love. Everything else, from nature to mortality was radically and permanently transformed by that one act of disobedience. When God speaks about the ramifications and destructive power of sin, you don't have to imagine what the ripple effects of sin might look like, we are still living in the consequences of that one moment. In fact, the reality of time, this new dimension in God's creation, reminds us of this fact every second of every day.   

Which brings up an interesting question, since we are now slaves to time, why are there so many examples of waiting in scripture?

• Abraham: Waited 25 years for his promised son, Isaac 
• Jacob: Waited 14 years to marry his beloved 
• Joseph: Waited 13 years in prison for his sufferings to be redeemed 
• Moses: Waited 40 years before leading the Israelites out of Egypt 
• David: Waited about 15 years between being anointed as king and taking the throne 
• Israel had to wait 400 years in Egypt. And after the exile there are another 400 years of waiting before Jesus is born. 
• Jesus: Waited 30 years before fulfilling his Father's will

And finally, “On one occasion, while He (Jesus) was eating with them, He gave them this command: ‘Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised…’”   —Acts 1:4

Our faith in God is often tested in the waiting periods. It is one of the most difficult times because we can easily slip into cruise control and become complacent in our relationship with God. Others may lean on their own abilities and strategies in a God-given task and take it on without Him. Times of waiting and not knowing are meant to foster our dependence on God and deepen our trust in Him. We should always be ready to move, but only in God’s timing. He is the orchestrator and will be the One to open the right doors at the right time so that He may accomplish through us His perfectly timed work.

What happens to us while we wait is sometimes more important than the fulfillment of what we are waiting for. 

Most of us desire to be people of action, and resting and waiting seem to be the enemy of both. And there is also the element of the mortality that now enslaves each of us. Have you ever wondered why God made it where almost one-third of our lives is spent in a semi-unconscious state? Not to mention the amount of time invested in just surviving each day. Food to be prepared, work so that we might purchase the essentials (and in our culture the non-essentials) of life. Clothing. Housing. Transportation. Sidebar - I was single until the age of thirty-nine and cooking has always been as mysterious as space travel in my existence. So one day I attempted to figure out how much of my life was invested in waiting in line for food. I can't remember the number I arrived at but it was embarrassing (and a little shocking . . . ) 

Is it really a shock that we all hate to wait? And I'm not even going to reference the obvious emphasis on the immediate in our culture. So instead of being obedient to our call to wait, we redouble our own efforts and plunge headlong into lives of hurry. And hurry has a bad habit of transforming our ability to care into apathy for those who most need our help.

Which begs the question from God's perspective, could it be that God doesn't place the same weight on the things that we deem as greatly important? And the other side of that coin might mean that the smaller things in our life (such as waiting) are more important than we can imagine?

Romans 8:24-25 says, "Hope that is seen is not hope at all. Who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience." 

I'll close with a famous prayer:

Patient Trust

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.

We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.

We should like to skip the intermediate stages.

We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.

And yet it is the law of all progress

that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—

and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;

your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,

let them shape themselves, without undue haste.

Don’t try to force them on,

as though you could be today what time

(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)

will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit

gradually forming within you will be.

Give Our Lord the benefit of believing

that his hand is leading you,

and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself

in suspense and incomplete.

—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,