Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart
and wait for the Lord~ Psalm
27:4
The warm weather in
Tucson during the winter months causes the population to explode from October
thru April. People come from all over North America to escape icy road conditions,
puffy coats and close relationships with their snow shovels.
The fleeting population
boom is a godsend for business owners. They adore the snowbirds and the money
they bring to our area. My husband so looks forward to the increase in sales that
in early November he prays fervently for blizzards on the East Coast. Judging
from the weather reports this past winter, we can all safely assume my husband
is praying some powerful prayers these days.
For those of us who
don’t own or manage a business, the increase in population is far less thrilling.
As the population surges, everything takes longer.
Traffic becomes a daily drama. There are more people, and the people don’t
always know where they are going or how to get there. So a ten-minute commute transforms
into twenty on most days. The wait time at restaurants doubles, and you can
forget about running in and out of the grocery store or the doctor’s office.
Waiting patiently has
never really been my thing. For a long time one of my favorite phrases was…
“Can’t you just hurry up already”?
When my young
children began repeating that phrase to one another I came under some heavy conviction.
I recognized that I had some pretty ugly entitlement issues when it came to
getting things in what I saw as a timely manner.
After some prayer, I
began the process of forcing myself to behave in a way that was patient and
gracious whenever I had to wait in a long line, or for my turn at something I
felt I shouldn’t have to wait for. Eventually acting patient and gracious
morphed into (usually) feeling patient and gracious.
I am now enough of a
grown-up that waiting on the small stuff doesn’t get to me like it used to. I
can (usually) endure having to wait through three green lights to make my turn or
a forty-minute wait at my favorite restaurant with a measure of civility and
grace.
Recently, I have begun to wonder if God thinks
I could still use some tweaking in this area. I have found myself waiting for what feels
like a really long time for some big prayers to be answered.
Waiting is hard. Whether we are waiting for a
long awaited answer to prayer, a much-needed change of circumstance or for
another person to have a change of heart, waiting is never easy. The delay I’ve
experienced is teaching me to wait like a spiritual grown-up. Opening myself up
to this process has helped me see waiting in a new light.
In John chapter
eleven Jesus receives the news that his friend Lazarus is critically ill. Jesus
does the opposite of what we would expect Him to do upon hearing the news that His
friend is terminally ill. He waits. Then He waits some more, and then He waits
some more. Jesus waits two full days before taking any sort of action on
Lazarus’ behalf.
On the surface Jesus’
deliberate dawdling seems mean, almost malevolent. Jesus possessed the power to
change Lazarus’ situation as quickly as He chose to. He could have healed
Lazarus from a distance if He wanted. He had done it before, but He chose not
to.
The words of some onlookers
at Lazarus’ graveside reflect our own feelings of frustration at times…
Could not he who opened the
eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying? John 11:37 NIV
What no one but Jesus knew at the time is that
Jesus’ decision to wait rather than act immediately was actually a sign of His
favor on Lazarus and his sisters. Jesus chose to reveal His glory to and
through this family in a way that no one before or since has experienced. Their
temporary pain at having to wait for something that seemed essential to them
became a story that has brought millions to faith in the God they loved.
It
seems to me that God must have been doing some work in the hearts of Mary and
Martha during the four days they waited for Jesus to show up. Those four days
of waiting must have felt like hell on earth, but they were really a refining
process. The family learned to accept God on His terms rather than their own. It
was something they needed to learn to prepare them for the next thing God had
for them.
Rather than a punishment, waiting is
sometimes a sign of God planning something bigger or better for us. Other times
waiting is part of a refining process. The wait time is an indicator God’s desire
to something in or through you that can only be done with the passing of
time.
I am learning that waiting
like a grown-up means holding on to hope and walking in faith. It means
believing that God is good and is working out His purposes as we wait on
Him. I am learning that waiting can be a
difficult but necessary refining process that will prepare us for the next
thing—if we let the process do its work.
But I pray
to you, Lord, in the time of your favor;
in your great love, O God, answer me with your sure salvation~ Psalm 69:13
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