Hurry and wait!

389 hurry and waitSometimes, it seems, waiting is the hardest part for us. After we think we know what we need and think we're ready for it, most of us find the wait is almost unbearable. In our Western world, when we sit in the car and listen to music for five minutes at a fast food restaurant, we can become frustrated and impatient. Imagine how your great-grandmother would see it.

For Christians, moreover, the waiting is complicated by the fact that we trust in God, and often we struggle to understand why we believe the things that we deeply believe in, that we need them for and over and over again prayed and did everything possible, did not get.

King Saul became concerned and troubled while waiting for Samuel to come to offer the sacrifice for battle (1. Sam 13,8). The soldiers became restless, some left him, and in his frustration at the seemingly endless waiting he finally made the sacrifice himself. Of course, that was when Samuel finally arrived. The incident led to the end of Sauls' dynasty (v. 13-14).

One or the other time, most of us probably felt like Saul. We trust God, but we can not understand why he does not intervene or calm our stormy sea. We wait and wait, things seem to get worse and worse, and finally, waiting for what we can endure seems to be going out. I know that in the past I sometimes felt like this when selling our property in Pasadena.

But God is faithful and He promises to get us through everything we encounter in life. He proved that again and again. Sometimes he walks with us through suffering and sometimes - more rarely, it seems he puts an end to what seems to never end. Either way, our faith calls us to trust it - to trust that it will do what is right and good for us. Often, looking back, we can only see the strength we have gained through the long night of waiting, and begin to realize that the painful experience may have been a disguised blessing.

Still, it is no less miserable to endure while we go through it, and we sympathize with the psalmist who wrote: “My soul is greatly troubled. Oh, Lord, how long!” (Psalm 6,4). There's a reason the old King James Version rendered the word "patience" as "long suffering"! Luke tells us of two disciples who were grieved on the road to Emmaus because it seemed their waiting was in vain and all was lost because Jesus was dead (Luke 2 Cor4,17). But at exactly the same time, the risen Lord, in whom they had put all their hopes, went by their side and gave them encouragement - they just did not realize it (vv. 15-16). Sometimes the same thing happens to us.

Often we don't see the ways in which God is with us, looking out for us, helping us, encouraging us - until some time later. It was only when Jesus broke bread with them that “their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from before them. And they said to one another: Was not our heart burning within us when he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?” (vv. 31-32).

When we trust in Christ, we don't wait alone. He stays with us in every dark night, he gives us the strength to endure and the light to see that everything is not over. Jesus assures us that he will never leave us alone8,20).

by Joseph Tkach


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