August 25, 2011 Waiting?

Psalm 40:1-3 I waited patiently for the Lord to help me, and He turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the pit of despair, out of the mud and mire. He set my feet on the solid ground and steadied me as I walked along. He has given me a new song to sing, a hymn of praise to our God.

How are you in this thing called waiting? Is it easy for you to sit in the doctor's office or stand in the line at the grocery store? Or how about waiting for an answer from a letter or email? Then there is the waiting we do for a holiday or birthday or ride somewhere. Can you wait in peace? Or does your foot start tapping, your paper rapping in impatience?

I was struck by a writer who said waiting was an action verb, that you must wait actively. Hmmm, seemed almost like a paradox to me, until I gave it some thought. Waiting involves the passing of time, and we can pass time mindlessly, sitting or standing there with our minds off in la-la land. And I must admit I have spent a lot of time like that, and like spent money, you just cannot get it back.

But the idea of waiting patiently. What is that all about? I think it has a sense of passing time in a state of anticipation, expecting a response. And I think though there might be an eagerness to it sometimes, that does not mean there should be an impatience.

I wonder if God doesn't have in mind that we could redeem that wait time, that we could use it as time to consider what He wants us to do, about that for which we wait, or perhaps to use to think about other things, or to pray. I do not believe in chance or coincidence or accident. I think that sometimes God wants me to wait because He wants to hear from me about someone or something I will see from that waiting space.  And sometimes I must wait there in order to hear Him because He knows the time I spend waiting for something else is the only time I might have to listen or speak to Him.

Wait time is like crossing a street. You can have a leisurely stroll from one side to the other, noticing everything around you, or you can be like the guy I saw on the news this morning, running furiously across the train tracks, noticing only the other side. I wonder how differently this day, or any day might be if we savored wait time instead of dreaded it. I keep a copy of the Message translation of the Bible with me at all times; it is so easy to read and redeem wait time. But I am also trying to redeem wait time with prayer, allowing my circumstances to prompt me to pray about things I might otherwise not notice.

Oh, I don't have this down pat, but I was so refreshed and encouraged by the possibilities of making waiting a pleasurable thing, something that honored God that I just had to share it with someone.