On Waiting...

Way back in the years of my childhood, I remember how I spent time with my grandmother.  She was the quintessence of patience and virtue.  I remember one specific day when she took me with her to the doctor’s office.  We sat down there in the waiting room (where were the toys that medical practitioners usually keep in the lobby?) and waited  I still am unnerved by how slow time passed by when I was 6 compared to now.  What must have been hours went by and still no nurse came into the room to admit my grandmother in.  I became jittery and fidgety.  Sitting there in that room was the worst torture anyone could do to me.  I whined and complained.  How could my grandmother do this to me?  Make me wait for hours on end for something that had nothing to do with me?

…and waited.

Her eloquent response to my whining was profound, “Patience is a virtue, Dear.”

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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.

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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.