When Waiting Is Hell

When Waiting Is Hell

by | Oct 6, 2014 | Church Newsletter Columns

WaitingHow long, O LORD, will I call for help, And You will not hear?
I cry out to You, “Violence!” Yet You do not save.
Habakkuk 1:2

I do not like to wait. To be perfectly clear, I am not to blame for this character flaw. Part of the blame I attribute to my mother, who is equally impatient. Some of it rests with the managers who schedules too few checkers at the stores where I wait in line. A teeny-tiny bit of blame belongs whoever programs red lights to be way too long at intersections. And a little of it belongs to modern technology, which has trained me to expect instant gratification with every computer click.

But most of the blame, the way I see it, belongs to God. After all, the moment I recently became aware of a difficult matter dear to my heart, I did what Christians are supposed to do. I started to pray a really good prayer. It was full of sentiments about accepting God’s will, whatever that might be. Packed with praise for God’s sovereignty and the goodness of His ways. Filled with snippets of Bible verses acknowledging all of the above. Stating my intent to wait upon the Lord until, in His perfect timing, He answered my prayer as He saw fit. Ending with big, fat, juicy, emotional “amen.”

About five seconds later, things started to fall apart. Not because I was impatient or anything. But because God did not immediately respond to my perfectly constructed, perfectly Christian prayer as expected. Instead, His answer was to wait. Which as has been mentioned before, is not something I do well. And I’m in good company. The Bible is full of impatient people who, while they couldn’t blame store managers or traffic light programmers or computers for their character flaws, they did occasionally blame God. And maybe their mothers. Though there’s not so much biblical evidence on that front, so let’s not go there.

However, the Bible is full of stories of people who blamed God for making them wait. Who did the people blame while they wandered for 40 years in the wilderness? God. Who did Jonah blame for his 3 day stay in the belly of a whale? God. Who did Elijah blame for the need to hide in a cave for days on end? God. Who did Habakuk want to blame when the kingdom of Judah was about to fall? God.

But Jesus, who laid aside His heavenly powers and come to earth, didn’t blame God when He waited and walked among us for 33 years. He didn’t blame God for hours of agony on the cross or for lying dead in a tomb for 3 days. Instead of blaming God for making Him wait, Jesus trusted His Father as He waited. The waiting was hell, but Jesus trusted God’s promise of the glory waiting for Him–and for us–on the other side.

When waiting is hell for you and me, we can do better than blaming God or store managers or technology, for our impatience. Instead, we can lean into Jesus. We can ask Him to show us how to wait and how to trust our faithful Father. With Jesus holding us up, we can look beyond the wait to what’s waiting on the other side–glory, wholeness, restoration, and rejoicing in the presence of God. An eternity worth waiting for, don’t you think?

Photo Credit: Stuart Miles at www.freedigitalphotos.com

Waiting for Spring

Waiting for Spring

by | Mar 20, 2012 | Daily Life

For the first time ever, my indoor bouquet of American Cancer Society daffodils and the bed of outdoor daffodils are blooming at the same time.

Since today is the first day of spring, this may seem like no big deal to many of you who live south of Iowa. But in this state, the calendar’s first day of spring and the weather’s first day of spring are usually weeks apart. But not this year.

This year on the first day of spring, the bleeding heart looks like this:

The magnolia like this:

Not to mention the iris,

the tulips,

the columbine,

and the lilacs.

Spring is almost a month ahead of itself, and its early appearance is a worry. Spring is one of those things to be anticipated, best savored when it arrives on time or even a little late. An early spring leads to complications, like when house guests show up before you’ve made the bed with fresh linens, or babies are born prematurely, or young people become rich before they’ve learned to handle money.

Once the leaves and buds and stalks appear, they’re sitting ducks for the killing frost that’s bound to come. After the frost, flowers don’t bloom, fruit trees don’t fruit, and plants spend the entire summer trying to recover. An early spring is like dessert being served before the meal. It tastes so good at first, but it spoils the appetite while leaving the stomach unsatisfied.

But, an early spring is the one we’ve got, and nothing can be done about it. Therefore, I’m doing my best to enjoy it, trying to convince myself that it’s okay to eat dessert first if it’s the only food in the house. So far the ruse is working. But when the killing frost comes – and rest assured it will – and wipes away all this early sweetness, will these pictures of early spring be enough to fill the emptiness inside?