Waiting

Monday, 24 Mar 2003

We wait...and don't we just hate it?
We wait in traffic, we wait in line, we wait for a baby to be born, we wait in a doctor's office, we wait at the airport, we wait at the DMV, we wait for a phone call, we wait, and we wait, and we wait...for most things in this life.

Is that how God has it planned? Why would He make us wait, and wonder, and worry...? And why do we hate waiting so much when it is so much a part of our lives? What if it was something we enjoyed? If it was, we sure could be enjoying a lot more of each day, couldn't we?

We wait to finish school, we wait to hear about a new job or to quit a job, we wait to get married, we wait to have children, we wait to lose weight, we wait to spend time with God, we wait to spend time with our friends, we wait to retire and do the things we love the most.

Thinking about the war, we wait for the war to start, we wait for it to finish. We wait to hear the news, we wait for loved ones to return home.

If we stop and think about it, waiting seems to consume most days we live.

Jim and I are waiting right now...we are waiting for our home to sell, we are waiting for our new RV to be delivered from Wyoming to the dealer in Sacramento, we are waiting to begin a new era in our lives, and with that wait comes many thoughts about our past, about our future, and about what we'll do...while we wait!

What is most human, is to wait and then add worry and frustration to the wait...but this is not what God has for us, is it?

God's timing is perfect in all things. God is never late, or stressed, or running to catch up with what should be. He is in control, perfect control, at all times. How in the world did we get so messed up, being that we were made in His image? Oh, that's right...that thing in the Garden with the apple...I wish Eve would have waited a bit longer, maybe thought about it a bit more...

Now the serpent was the shrewdest of all the creatures
the Lord God had made. "Really?" he asked the woman.
"Did God really say you must not eat any of the fruit in the garden?"
"Of course we may eat it," the woman told him.
"It's only the fruit from the tree at the center of the garden that we
are not allowed to eat. God says we must not eat it or even
touch it, or we will die."
"You won't die!" the serpent hissed.
"God knows that your eyes will be opened when you eat it. You will
become just like God, knowing everything, both good and evil."
The woman was convinced. The fruit looked so fresh and delicious, and it
would make her so wise! So she ate some of the fruit. She also gave
some to her husband who was with her. Then he ate it, too.
Genesis 3:1-6
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Oh, if they had only waited and consulted God a bit more about it! We might be living in a whole different world today. A world of all good, not of any evil, but who knows. And if we had been there, we probably would have done the exact thing Adam and Eve did. It was tempting, they were tempted, and they went ahead and ate of the fruit. They fell for the devil's lies.

It was not a surprise to God. Don't get me wrong. God knew they were tempted, He knew they would eat the fruit, He knew the free choice He had given them would be their downfall, but He also knew that He was going to provide a way for all men and women to return to Him, to be cleansed and made pure and holy once again, by sending His only Son to this earth to die for the sins of the many, that started with the sin in the Garden.

Why free choice?
Because, to love fully and truly, we must be given that choice.
Love cannot be a forced issue for it to be true love.
We must choose to love, and then choose to continue loving, as we wait...

For forty years the Israelites wandered in the wilderness. God had set them free from slavery in Egypt and even though their journey to the Promised Land should have only taken 11 days, they wandered around for forty years! It's hard for me to imagine that it could take them that long. Didn't they know the end of the journey was just up ahead? Couldn't they set a straight course and get going? What were they thinking? What were they doing all that time?

God had them waiting, I believe. He had them learning to trust in Him, to rely on Him, to follow where He would lead them. After everything God had already done for them, still they hated the waiting, they were frustrated by the waiting, and they had trouble seeing God's perfect plan for all things.

As Jim and I have been preparing our house to put on the market and organizing the things that we will move into our new "home" when it arrives, we have definitely had our moments of waiting. We are waiting right now. Our RV is being built in Casper, Wyoming. We got word that it was in the paint shop and as soon as the paint dried, it would be delivered to California. But...God had different plans. There have been huge snowstorms in Wyoming, closing down the roads between here and there, and our RV has been sitting in Wyoming as the drivers wait for the roads to reopen.

Well, we're like a couple of kids waiting for Christmas morning. It's Christmas Eve and the night seems to be ten nights long! We can barely sleep from the excitement of what the morning holds, and yet we must wait. There is no way to hurry the night along and not sleeping only makes the nights seem that much longer! It's nice to be waiting for good news this time, but it's still waiting...

We think about the Israelites in the wilderness, their excitement to enter God's Promised Land and how there were times the waiting frustrated them. They had Moses beating on a rock for water instead of patiently praying. There was the time when Moses went up on the mountain and did not return for 40 days. By the time he returned with the Ten Commandments, the people had melted down their jewelry and built a golden calf to worship instead of worshiping God. What were they thinking? Looking back on their lives, it is easy to see the progression, the path they were living on, the outcome to their story. It's easy because it's over, it's in print, and we know the end of the story.

It's not so easy when you are living in the middle of it! We humans are not good at waiting, we want what we want now, and we don't want to wait two seconds longer for it than need be!

And yet God says to wait on Him.

Psalm 37:34
Don't be impatient for the Lord to act!
Travel steadily along his path.
He will honor you, giving you the land.
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Jim and I have already been able to look back a bit and see God's perfect timing in all things. Some waits have been difficult, some a bit easier. Waiting 5½ years to know whether Phil would live or die, was a long wait. Sometimes, not with the ending we would hope for. I remember the day Phil died, I sat on my bed that morning wondering how long I would sit with Phil in his room. How long would I hold his hand, read to him, spend time with him. Would it be a day, a month, or would he be healed on this earth? I remember asking God to please help me, to please give me the strength that I would need no matter how long the wait would be. I had no idea it would soon be finished...

There are mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, wives and husbands and children waiting to hear news of their loved ones in the war. The waiting is long, but no one knows how long. The waiting can almost seem unbearable at times. Without prayer, without trust in God, without full confidence that God is in control, the waiting seems so out of control, because it is. Out of our control. Only God knows the beginning from the end. We cannot.

Last week we thought we were ready to move ahead. We made our plans to go get our RV, and our plans fell apart because of the snowstorms. Looking back now, we see that we were not ready, that we were much too busy getting our home ready to be put on the market, and to have an open house this last weekend. After almost two months of down-sizing, we were getting tired. We were ready for it to be finished, and our fleshly side said hurry up, let's be done with this.

God's perfect plan said to wait.
To be patient.
To let it fall into place in His perfect way.
To get the work done first, and then rest a bit.

We truly believe God wants us to enjoy the day to the utmost when we go to pick up our new home in Sacramento. He doesn't want us to be stressed, exhausted, at wits end. He wants us refreshed, renewed, and thankful for all that He has done to help us get to this moment in our lives.

This will be a whole new era that we are moving into. We don't know what to expect. We don't know where we will be going or when, we don't know much of anything except that God has been helping us each step of the way along this journey and we are excited about the path ahead.

As human beings, we hate the wait, but the wait is where we grow and learn to trust God fully. Perhaps He designed the "wait" for just that purpose. The wait is where worry can grow if we are not focused on God. It is where stress can start to pile on and destroy us if we are not trusting Him for all things. It is where we either grow stronger, or disintegrate under the pressure of it all.

The wait is good, and has a purpose, and it will help us be all things in Christ if we will only surrender each day, each hour, to His eternal purpose and plan for our lives.

Isaiah 30:18
But the Lord still waits for you to come to him
so he can show you his love and compassion.
For the Lord is a faithful God. Blessed are those
who wait for him to help them.
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Easier said than done? You bet!
I know, I'm living it, we all live it. We all know people who are in the middle of waiting for things, important things. We all know some who have just experienced deliverance from the waiting, and those who are just now heading into a time of waiting. It is life, it is real, it is difficult, but I don't believe it was designed to destroy us. I believe God designed it for our good.

Daily, we must choose between worry and trust in Him. We must choose between forging ahead on our own, or waiting on His perfect timing. We must choose between anger in the waiting period, or peace that only God can give during those most difficult moments.

Hey, some of them aren't even that difficult! Waiting in the longest line at the grocery store? That shouldn't be so tough, should it? It's silly really, and yet we can fuss and fume about it the whole time we're standing there. Maybe God has us standing there for a reason? Maybe He's saying be still and know that I am God. Maybe someone behind us or in front of us is in need of prayer, and we can take that time to do that for them without them even knowing.

Sitting in heavy traffic on the freeway can make us crazy! We have places to go, people to meet, dinner to prepare after a long day at the office! And yet we can be still, we can listen to some great music, talk over the day with God without the phone ringing (barring cell phones) or interruptions from anyone else. We can take the time to pray, to find God's peace, and to arrive home with the stress of the day behind us.

Waiting in the dentist's office, or for any appointment, might give us the time to do some reading, to do some thinking, to sit for a minute in our busy day and spend some quiet time with God. Breathing deep, relaxing a bit, and releasing us from all our duties for a moment in time because we are supposed to be sitting there, we have an appointment, there is nothing else we have to do at that moment except wait.

I think you're getting the picture. Perhaps waiting was designed by God to give us moments in our day to be with Him, to think about Him, to be quiet with Him. And yet the enemy would like to use those moments to frustrate us the most, to convince us that if God truly loved us He would not be causing this wait to happen in our lives. If God truly loved us, He would hurry things along, give us an answer NOW, make it happen in our timing and in our way!

Psalm 27:4-6
The one thing I ask of the Lord -
the thing I seek most -
is to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
delighting in the Lord's perfections and
meditating in his Temple.
For he will conceal me there when troubles come;
he will hide me in his sanctuary.
He will place me out of reach on a high rock.
Then I will hold my head high,
above my enemies who surround me.
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Oh, there's so many good things in those verses. If we seek to live in the house of the Lord all the days of our lives, it will be a house of such peace. If we delight in the Lord's perfections and think about Him, our focus will be on what is good and pure and lovely, and not on this world's frustrations. We can enter into His sanctuary any day, any time, by just spending quiet moments with Him and letting Him draw us into His presence. He will set us on a high rock, high above the troubles of this world, high above the enemies in our day that seek to devour us. It does not get rid of the "enemies," but God can take us to a place where we are protected from them because our focus is not on them, but on Him.

It's not easy, it takes practice, it takes daily time with Him and asking for His help. I have my worries now about the house selling, about the timing of it all, about many things, and I know that I cannot just rid myself of those worries. I am much too human for that. The great thing is that I can tell God I'm worried, that I can ask Him for His help, and He helps me. It seems when I am most honest with Him, when I reveal what is bothering me most, and ask for His help in dealing with it, that is when He is most evident in my life, helping me through it. He doesn't want us to pretend all is well, that we have it all under control, that we're not worrying about anything. He knows our hearts no matter how much we would like to pretend it isn't so. He knows we have concerns each day in our lives, especially with a war going on. What He most wants from us is our honesty. He created us just the way we are. He knows each hair on our head and each thought in our mind. He only asks that we bring it all to Him so that He can place us up on the high rock above it all, letting Him deal with the enemies of our day. Either the enemies from within, or the enemies in foreign lands.

Psalm 26:6b-8
I come to your altar, O Lord,
singing a song of thanksgiving
and telling of all your miracles.
I love your sanctuary, Lord,
the place where your glory shines.
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Jim and I are coming to the end of a long process of readying the house, selling our possessions, and taking a step of faith into an unknown future. It is exciting, but without prayer, without surrender, without the peace of God which transcends understanding...I'd rather not! But then we'd still be sitting in a house crowded with things we really don't need, we'd still have a room filled with Phil's things not knowing what to do with any of them, and we'd be held back from all that God has for us in our tomorrow's. Wonderful things, I'm sure!

With prayer, the house is ready to sell, our RV equipment sits in the garage waiting for our new home to be pulled up out front so we can load it up, and the things in our life that could have kept us prisoners of the past have for the most part been gone through, or sold, or given away, with a few cherished possessions being put in storage. Each day along the way, God has directed us and helped us through things that have been painful at times, joyful at other times, and just plain tiring at other times. Many days we would drop into bed exhausted, but very satisfied with the day's accomplishments.

I look forward to days in the future when we can look back on this period in our lives and reflect even more on God's helping hand and goodness through it all. Although the tears still come at times because the missing is still great in our hearts for our son, the healing continues on each day. There is waiting in that also. We will leave this home with good memories, some tough memories and very grateful hearts. We will enter into our new home with wonderment and excitement and a bit of fear, I imagine, for the unknown; but once again, we will take it to God in prayer and ask Him for His help through any fear that comes and He will see us through. He has taught us how to do that in so very many ways, by daily walking through this life with Him.

We have heard that the snow has lifted and that our new home is on its way out of Wyoming as I write this. Still, it may be like "the check is in the mail." We have no delivery date, we have no pick-up date, it hangs out there in the unknown, and so we wait.

The people of Israel had walked through the middle
of the sea on dry land, as the water stood up like a wall on both sides.
This was how the Lord rescued Israel from the Egyptians that day. And the
Israelites could see the bodies of the Egyptians washed up on the shore.
When the people of Israel saw the mighty power that the
Lord had displayed against the Egyptians, they feared the Lord
and put their faith in him and his servant Moses.
Exodus 14:29-31
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Oh, but we can forget so quickly, can't we?
Looking back, it all seems so clear.
Looking ahead, we can get so impatient!

Thank you God for the wait, because it is a time when I can slow down, draw closer to You, and marvel at your perfect timing in all things. Looking back I will know more, although never all of it. Looking forward, I can only trust in You. It is the only way to keep a peaceful heart in this world.

Thank you for the peace that You provide when we come to you because our human emotions get carried away to places they were never meant to go.

Thank you for giving us the stories of the golden calf. We wonder at the Israelites impatience, and yet so many times we find ourselves just as impatient as they were. Help us to learn from them and accept the waiting as a gift of time spent with You. Help us to remember and to know that when it is time for Moses to come down from the mountain and deliver Your news to us, it will be so. Until that time, help us to continue to trust and wait on You for all things.

Be with all those families who are missing loved ones right now, and all those in the military as we wait for news of them each day. We don't know how and when this war will end, and the waiting can be so difficult, but we know that You are in control and we can put our trust in You.

Living in His peace,
Diane