I hate waiting. To me waiting feels a lot like being stuck in the mud ~ unable to move forward and impossible to go back. It’s an uncomfortable place. But when I think back on my childhood, I realize that waiting was not always difficult for me. I remember the excitement and anticipation of waiting for Christmas or an upcoming birthday. But one of my most treasured memories is waiting for that first hot, summer-like day of spring when my Mom would pull down a huge box from the attic (at least it seemed huge to me at the time) filled with all of our play clothes from last year. When my five sisters and I arrived home from school on that first hot day of the season, I prayed that this would be the day we’d get to try on all the summer clothes in that big box to see who would get to wear what. There was always at least one treasured item my older sister wore the summer before, that I hoped would fit me this year. What a thrill it was to put on the special summer top I had been coveting for at least a year, waiting to have my turn to show it off in the neighborhood. I felt like a model walking down the runway in the latest fashion from Paris. Waiting was exciting back then ~ but not now. What happened? Why is waiting such an uneasy place?
We are all in a waiting room of one kind or another, aren’t we? We’re waiting for the perfect job or the perfect spouse; waiting to get pregnant; waiting for our loved one to get well or for our own marriage to be healed. We’re waiting for the joy we thought we would find when we began this journey we call Christianity. Waiting, while God seems so silent. It’s a difficult place for most of us if we’re really honest about it.
But lately I’ve become more and more aware that waiting doesn’t have to be the in-between place where we are so disquieted. In-between is a passive, powerless place ~ a stuck-in-the-middle place ~ where we sit longing for whatever we think is supposed to come next. I don’t imagine that is what God had in mind for us. I believe He designed life itself to be a waiting place where we move from one interlude to the next. If we choose to look at waiting as an uncomfortable ~ stuck ~ useless time, we miss an enormously significant portion of our lives.
Waiting is really what life is all about. We’ve been given a certain number of years here on this earth to live & accomplish God’s plan for our lives, while we wait to get to our ultimate home. Life truly is an eternal waiting room, filled with God-designed intervals where we must linger, waiting on His timing for big things and small. God has a purpose for these waiting places. If only we would trust Him and seek His plan, how much more peaceful and productive could they be? Perhaps while we wait for the perfect spouse, God wants to use us in a way He can’t once we have the responsibility of a marriage relationship. Or maybe, while we are praying and waiting for our spouse to find work or for our
child to get well, God desires to use us to minister to someone who is going through the same struggle. Or while we’re waiting for God to heal our marriage, perhaps He is doing a work in us to build our faith, trust and relationship with Him.
When I am in the waiting room at a doctor’s office, I have learned to bring a good book or my laptop so that the waiting time is productive. I am convinced that God has something productive for us to do or learn during all our waiting times. And in finding that productive purpose, God will give us something surprising ~ joy in the waiting. What a gift that would be! What would the waiting room you find yourself stuck in right now look like, if you found God’s purpose in it? What if you didn’t just exist in the ‘in-between’ but actually invited God into your waiting room, to fulfill His plan? What if He really could redeem this time, transforming it from what you thought was a fruitless waste into something of value ~ perhaps even eternal value. Now that would be a joy! This week, as you sit in your own personal waiting room, take some time to think and pray about how you can purposely choose to find Joy in the Waiting.
