On waiting…
It may seem tiresome. Waiting, I mean. I can say for my part that waiting usually feels like time wasted. Waiting. Even writing the word out makes me a little jumpy. I’m in a season of waiting right now. Maybe you are.
We’re waiting for a baby to be born. We’re waiting for God to show us who he has chosen to pastor our church. We seem to be in a constant state of waiting for “God’s next move” in our life, whether it’s a job thing, or a writing thing, or a music thing- whatever.
I have a nephew who is waiting for a baby to be born. Like today. Or tomorrow maybe. I remember waiting for my second child to be born. It was A_GON_IZING. We’ve waited for children to come home from their freshman year at college. We’ve waited for brothers to come home from war. We’ve maybe even had the burden of waiting for fathers or mothers to come to the rest of death after debilitating illness. And we all wait for the right time, the time when the fate of all creation finds rest in the unfolded revelation of God.
Again.
I find it comforting, in a sort of sick way, that God takes so long to do things. Time is a funny thing- it is. Time is linear. For us. One thing can only happen following the thing that happens before it. It just does. For us.
The bible says a lot of things about time. It says that God has his own time. That it’s different from man’s time. I’ve taken immense comfort from the belief that time is a created thing, and that as Creator, God is not bound or subject to linear time as I am. That a breath is as 10,000 years, and that 10,000 years as a breath. That I can and do exist in God’s sight as he wills me to be upon the completion of his providence and sanctification, even though, in my sight, today, I’m still a pathetic half-wit of a man.
That even if I am in this “desert of the senses,” blind, deaf, and mute, God has fully mapped out the course and circumstance of my life, and not one single moment is wasted as he chips away the excrement from the form and image he created me in. All I really have to do is stand still and try not to flinch too much.
And I’m not really blind. Or deaf. I have the leadings of the Holy Spirit and the instruction and correction of God’s word. Nor am I mute. I have the prayers of my spirit, and the songs of my heart. The bible says that my prayers themselves are inspired by the Holy Spirit, who alone knows the mind of God. So, I can take hints from the words of my prayers.
What are you praying for? When you sing, what do you sing about? What scriptures are you reading? And finally, when you are doing all these things, what is the Spirit of God saying to you? Remember the prophet in the mountain: it came not in the fire, nor the earthquake, but in the whisper. What is the loudest voice saying? Can you hear the quietest?
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I have to tell you that this morning, I’m basking in the temporary glow of short-term revelation: the message of forgiveness, of it’s indelibility, it’s permanence, it’s irrevocability is especially close to me right now. In the sight of God, I am as he intends me to be. Through Christ. In the sight of the Spirit, I am on a path from where and who I was in sin to the place I shall be, presented spotless and unblemished before the throne of God. In Jesus alone, and by no work of my own, I have gained that status, that glowing report, that untarnished, fleck-less, and altogether harmonious state of existence called Shalom, which Jesus understood but couldn’t know, which the first couple themselves did know in the garden before the serpent, when in the cool of the afternoon, God would walk with them in the shade of the garden’s leaves, and they would hear the rustle of His footsteps in the brush. This is the prize which I run for. My legs are burning, and the wind blurs my vision, but yet I will run. Don’t give up.
