…and waited.
Her eloquent response to my whining was profound, “Patience
is a virtue, Dear.”
~~~~~
Patience is one of those virtues that seems to be put to the
side in my culture. In North America,
patience seems to be a worthless virtue.
Literally everything is designed so that we don’t have to be
patient! Computers are getting faster,
access to internet is more widespread, work schedules are tighter, and even food can be made and served in under five minutes. It somewhat disturbs me how the mindset of my
culture has been conditioned to expect prompt service and to always be 120% efficient with
our time. Waiting is unheard of! If we are made to wait, it is to the point of
offense. Our time is being wasted and
time, of course, is money.
I am occasionally deluded by the thought: you know, I’m actually a pretty patient
person. Then I promptly look down at
my smartphone because I can’t wait to get home to check my e-mail. Sure, society is always on the go and you
have to keep up or get left behind, but are we losing a valuable virtue just
because we don’t have time to learn it?
Nothing in my life shows me how impatient I am more than my
times of self reflection and prayer…especially in time of prayer. This past spring, I was made very aware of
how much my culture’s impatience is flowing through my veins. The speaker of my college’s conference spoke
about waiting on the Lord. He spoke about how, as an international
worker, he needs to spend a lot of time in prayer. He admitted that the first few hours are
usually spent climbing through thoughts and feelings before his mind is clear,
at which time he just waits.
This concept of waiting was not new to me, but in that
moment as he spoke of it I knew that I had no knowledge of what it was like to wait on
the Lord in that manner. The most I had
ever spent in prayer was an hour, and that was difficult enough! How could someone spend up to 6 hours or more
in prayer? I wouldn’t know what to…say…
Why do we have to say anything? Do we have to constantly have words at the
ready? Why are we so opposed to silence
and stillness?
The Bible’s authors knew a good amount about this. To be still and know God. To wait on the
Lord. In the Old Testament a psalmist
wrote:
“I wait for
the Lord, my soul does wait, and in His word do I hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than the
watchmen for the morning.” (Psalm 130: 5,6)
Waiting for the Lord means many things
according to this passage. Note how in
this passage the psalmist compares his time waiting for the Lord to a watchman
waiting for dawn.
Waiting involves the passage of
time. I hate how time passes by now like
water through my fingers, when it once stood as unmoving as glass. I forget many times when I feel that I am off
course or not doing enough, that God’s timing is much different than mine and
that I must exercise patience as that time goes by. Like when I was young, this process is
torture to me. It is sometimes
accompanied by periods of feeling that God is not there, that He has moved
somewhere else for the time being. It is
hard not to feel depressed in these times.
Though it is tough, we must move on and hope…
Waiting involves the hope that what we
are waiting for will come. I find myself
continually looking to the future for a time when God would make Himself better
known to me. I think that this
culturally engrained vision of only looking forward prevents us from seeing
what we have now. Instead of seeing how
God is with us, we look to see where God might be leading us. Maybe we should be more concerned about the
present? We might be surprised by what
we find…
Waiting involves trusting that God will
move and speak. I under exaggerate when
I say that this part is really hard for me.
Again, my culture’s imprint on me is by how much we plan for the future
so that we can be prepared for anything.
Unfortunately, we can’t control most of what comes our way. The weather cannot be stopped, I cannot end
my constant aging, and many other events come to pass without warning. One of my struggles is to trust that God has
things under control, even when I don’t.
This is a work in progress for me that makes itself evident every day.
Lastly, waiting involves seeking. Unlike many other concepts of waiting, this
one was a brand new concept for me to swallow. Through my first years of college, I found
myself expecting that God was just going to start talking to me or give me
signs without doing anything myself. I
was rarely reading scripture or spending time in prayer. I wanted God to just make Himself known to
me, to fix me and change me, without getting my hands dirty and stepping out of
my ‘coasting’ shoes; but how would the Lord ever be seen if I were not seeking
for Him? How would a watchman see the
sunrise if he fell asleep?
Seeking while Waiting
So how do we wait and seek, that we
might find? Spending time in Scripture
and in prayer is a good start. The
conference speaker compared his time in prayer to waiting for the bus. He said that one cannot wait for a bus and
work in the garden, or wait for a bus and do the dishes. One must be at the bus stop to be waiting for
a bus. Similarily, you must be in a
position of waiting for God if you are ever going to hear from Him.
One of my friends put it this way: if
you are planning on catching a fish, you have to cast your line into the
water. It doesn’t mean that you will
catch a fish every time you cast your line, but you will never catch a fish if
you never cast your line. In out seeking
for God, we sometimes hear from God. It
doesn’t happen every time, but how would be hear unless we are in the act of
seeking?
Prayer is only one way to open yourself
up to God, but it is something that all of the prophets and apostles did to
seek God. It is well known that Christ
often left the apostles to go off and pray alone, that he might hear from the
Father. Prayer is the heart of a
person. If we are to made to put out
identities in God yet we are not praying to Him, it is like a marriage where
one spouse starts ignoring the other.
Eventually there will be a large rift between the two that can only be
remedied by communication.
~~~~~
I am constantly learning what it means
to wait on God. Life tests my patience
everyday. I end up having to shift my
mindset from “my time is important” to “God will work when He deems it
time”. Does this mean I just wait in
life? Well, no. We have to live, earn money, pay bills, etc.;
however, out connection with God should be lived out as well, so that the hook
is in the water constantly throughout the day.
In under a week I will be in
Kosovo. I have no clue as to what God
will show me while I’m there, or what God will accomplish in the hearts of men
and women. I pray that God would show
himself to my team and I as we try to relate to people about life and music and
what is beyond all of that.
I feel as if I’ve been waiting for so
long, but now God is moving in incredible ways.
The sunrise is approaching. I
just hope that I will be awake when it comes.
