Wait For It

This post is a part of the Five Minute Friday link up. We write for 5 minutes on a one-word prompt and see what happens. Today’s word is “Wait.” 

My 17-year-old daughter, my husband, and I are reading aloud each night from Jan Karon’s wonderful Mitford series. We’re right now on Out to Canaan and one of the big themes in this particular book is “wait.”

Under nefarious circumstances, several different real estate investment firms from Florida are trying to swoop in and buy up properties in the small, North Carolina town of Mitford. All these properties are meaningful to the town’s beloved Episcopal priest, Father Timothy Kavanagh.

When the mansion of a wealthy deceased parishioner, dear to the town—and Father Tim—needs to be sold and an investment company wants to come in and build a spa, Father Tim says he wants to wait 30 days before making a decision on the way-under-value offer.

When the local bakery owned by a dear friend is for sale because she thinks she needs to move to Tennessee, and she’s unsettled about the whole thing, Father Tim advises her to wait on an offer that is way below her asking price, but the only offer that’s come in.

And then, to top it all off, when his very own parsonage goes on the market because he is retiring—in a year!—a full-price, cash offer causes him great concern, especially when they want an answer immediately. He says he wants no action taken for 10 days.

At this point in the book—we’re on chapter 18—we know what happens with 2 of the 3, but we’re still waiting to hear about the 3rd. I don’t want to give any spoilers, so I’ll just say, waiting is not easy, especially when you’re being pressed for action. Sometimes we just want to jump at what’s right in front of us. But waiting, especially when God is asking us to, is always the best thing to do.

Think about Abraham and Sarah. They got anxious about seeing God’s promise fulfilled, so they took things into their own hands. That did not end up well. (See Genesis 16 for the full story.)

Waiting is hard. There’s no doubt about it. But waiting on God is always good.

On that note, I highly recommend Rebecca Brewster Stevenson’s wonderful book Wait: Thoughts and Practice in Waiting on God. 

 

 

In The Fullness of Time

I’m not very good at waiting. I admit that. Especially when I’m waiting for someone to respond to an email, or a text. Especially a text.

I can’t imagine what the Jews went through for hundreds of years waiting for the Messiah. “How long, O Lord?”

My waiting for a response from a friend, or test results, or a long-awaited desire to be fulfilled, seems pretty petty in relation to a Messiah. A Savior. The Jews were under  terrible rulers for so long. Roman reign was hard and cruel. The Jews must have thought God was never going to show up.

And so many missed it when He did. Expecting a political savior, they missed the One who would save their souls. Wanting an easier life here on earth, they turned away from the One who would give them eternal life in heaven.

Their wait was worth it, if only they had been ready to see God’s answer to their years and years and years of prayers. In the fullness of time.

I don’t always hear back when I want to when it comes to text messages from friends, but may I never miss God showing up.

 

This post is a part of the Five Minute Friday link up. Five minutes of writing on a one-word prompt. No editing. Go check it out!

 

Wait For It

I tried an exercise recently that involved writing every day on a random subject for 12 minutes. I called it my Daily Dozen. I asked my Facebook friends to give me a one-word prompt that I would use, in the order I received them. I was overwhelmed with 88 responses.

So I spent nearly 3 months writing every day. I loved the process as it really stretched me to talk about words as diverse as “abide” and “zombies,” from “chihuahuas” to “cats.” It was amazing to me how often the word for the day aligned with the calendar. As my 3 months of daily posts came to an end at the beginning of January, it was very appropriate that the word would be “waiting.”

We had been waiting for our first grandchild to be born. And wouldn’t you know it, he was a week late.

We don’t like waiting for things.

Waiting to hear news of whether our kid got into the college of their choice.

Waiting for tests results from a biopsy.

Waiting for a job.

Waiting for God to provide a spouse.

Waiting can cause unease and anxiety. Especially when we’re not sure what the outcome will be. Our minds usually go to the worst-case scenario. It’s easy for us to jump to conclusions and then let worry take over.

But worry gets us nowhere.

“They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they will walk and not faint” (Is. 40:31).

“Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” (Ps. 27:14).

It seems that if the Bible encourages us to wait, then maybe it’s not such a bad thing. We’re not used to delayed gratification. We have microwaves and Instapots and Amazon Now. We want things when we want them.

But God doesn’t work that way.

Micah 7:7 says, “But as for me, I will look to the LORD; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me.”

I haven’t come across any Scripture that encourages us to be impatient. In fact, the fruit of the Spirit includes patience.

Whaaat?

Amazing, isn’t it?

There must be something to that. God would not promote it if He didn’t consider it a good thing.

Romans 8:25 says, “But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”

If we are focused on the Lord, then we have hope rather than fear when we are waiting for something, because we see that the Lord is good. We see that all His ways are good. We see that He does not let us down.

When I was anxious after a late-term ultrasound showed a dilation in our grandson’s bowels, I was not focusing on who the Lord is. I wanted the baby to come quickly so that we could find out what this dilation was. But that wasn’t trusting, that was fearing.

If God is good, and He is, then our waiting will never be in vain.

 

 

Guest Post: Waiting, Waiting, Waiting

I’m privileged today to share some words from my new blogger friend, Julie. One of the cool things about meeting Julie for me was to find out that we have things in common from a long time ago. Julie writes today on a topic that is hard for nearly everyone in America–waiting. You can read more from Julie at her blog: www.thesandersplanet.com.

When Jesus reached the spot, He looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately.  I must stay in your house today” (Luke 19:5).

 I remember waiting for the bus to take me to ballet class.  Mom taught piano lessons after school, and I wanted to dance.  So, even though I was 13 or 14, I took the bus.

Shiny cars zoomed by as I sat on the bench alongside Whittier Blvd.  Everyone moved with direction and purpose, the traffic thick with exhaust fumes and rattling mufflers.  I seemed to be the only one waiting.

Of course, if I wanted to catch the bus, I had to get there before it arrived.  The bus driver wouldn’t wait for me.  He didn’t know I would be there.  He would just pass by the spot if the bench was empty.

Waiting for him was the only way to be sure that I’d be there when he got to the bus stop.

So, with bag of toe shoes and leg warmers in hand, I’d wait.  And even though everyone else around me hurried by, I knew that to get where I wanted to go, I’d wait.  Waiting wasn’t fun, but dancing was.  The hope of dancing was worth the wait.

How like Zaccheaus.

Zaccheaus knew what he wanted.  He wanted to see who Jesus was.  He was curious. He wanted a glimpse.

But his height, or lack of it, hindered him.  So he ran ahead to a tree along the road, scrambled up and waited.  He waited for whom he knew was coming.  He got way more than he expected.

First, he did get to see Jesus. From his tree branch, he had a clear view over the heads of the crowd. That was all he wanted—curiosity satisfied.  But then, he also got Jesus’ attention.  At that spot, Jesus looked at him and called him by name and invited Himself to dinner.

From then on, Zaccheaus needed more than just his curiosity satisfied.  He needed his soul satisfied.  Jesus would turn Zach’s world upside down, inside out, forever changed.

All from waiting alongside the road Jesus was taking.

I want to wait like that—expectant.

Instead of impatient because it seems answers are taking too long.  Instead of anxious because I wonder if God remembers us.  Instead of fearful because what Jesus asks of us might be hard.

I want to wait knowing that whatever God has planned for us will be way better than what we’re hoping for, way more than what we expected.

There’s a spot; a place where Jesus will look at me and call me by name and invite me to feast.  And if I’m not willing to wait, I might miss Him when He passes by.

So maybe waiting is less about biding my time and more about positioning myself to see Jesus.

Thanks, Zaccheaus.  I’ll take that.

Julie Sanders just recently entered the blogging world, but she’s loved the world of creative communication for most of her life.  She and her husband have worked with Keynote, the music and creative arts ministry of Cru,  for nearly 20 years, performing and training performers around the world.  They and their 3 currently live in Orlando and are waiting to see what new adventure the Lord is writing into their stories.