WAIT is a four letter word in our culture. In fact, it’s the one I hate the most.
We want fast service at the restaurant, next day shipping and immediate results. I can’t stand the person who slowly weaves in front of me at the grocery store just slightly faster than a baby crawls somehow managing to block the whole aisle. You know the person I’m talking about. I despise being stuck in traffic or trailing the driver who doesn’t understand why the left lane exists. If WIFI is taking even a few extra seconds for me to send emails I go look for another signal. We live in a culture of immediacy, and we’ve all gotten sucked into it.
There are different ways to wait, and two primary narratives we can choose to follow.
The waiting room. In a waiting room you sit and kill time. No one is excited to be there. You are detained in waiting prison with no hints on when your name will be called. As you flip the pages of the well worn magazine you would never choose to read at home you daydream about what else you would like to be doing. You check the clock wondering how you will ever finish your appointment in time to get to your next meeting. Waiting rooms are full of cranky people.
The starting block. I grew up both swimming and running competitively at different times in my life. I remember crowding the line waiting for the gun to fire and grabbing the starting block waiting for the horn. We had trained a along time to ready our bodies. My team had talked about the race all week as we sized up our opponents. We talked about the pace we would set and our game plan. Starting blocks are full of expectant people.
I live much of life in the waiting room, but I want to learn how to live at the starting block. I want to learn to wait expectantly each day like my wife and I did before meeting our two oldest children through the miracle of adoption.
Luckily the struggle to wait is not just embedded in our culture, but it’s an age old human struggle. Take comfort in these words from the Old Testament about waiting.
Habakkuk 2:1-3
I will take my stand at my watchpost and station myself on the tower,
and look out to see what he will say to me,
and what I will answer concerning my complaint.
And the Lord answered me:
“Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it.
For still the vision awaits its appointed time, it hastens to the end—it will not lie.
If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.”
This passage reminds me more of a starting block than a waiting room. I sense expectation in these verses. I sense a trust in the plans of God.
What changes as we age?
The younger we are the less we think about risk. I used to jump off cliffs before checking the water depth below and drive faster than my station wagon was designed to drive on curvy mountain roads. When we’re young we haven’t seen things go wrong, so why would they go wrong this time? Risk is not the illness of the young, patience is. Younger people and organizations tend to pull the trigger quickly. They either don’t know what they have to lose or simply don’t care. Faith is rich for the young, but patience is rare.
The longer we live the more mistakes we make. We have fallen on our face, because we went into battles unprepared. We want to protect ourselves from embarrassment again. As humans and organizations age it is easy to stop risking. We can trade hard decisions for status quo, policy and protocol. Faith can become a distant memory in the rear view mirror. We have accomplishments and pride to protect. This is no phantom; it’s a real thing we face with more life experience.
So, what’s the remedy? I only know of one; choosing to trust in the sovereignty of God.
We must believe God is good, He has not forgotten about us, and He still wants to use us. God is crafting and planning our lives. Ephesians 2:10 reminds us, “we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
God has not forgotten you. He’s not done with you. Let’s not live our lives in the waiting room. Prepare, stretch and come on up to the starting block.