In the concluding paragraph of my December blog I wrote, in reference to the fiscal cliff, “And there will be ten more such crises by the time this blog is posted.” Little did I know the seriousness of the crisis we would face in the month of December in Newtown, CT.
In my December 9th Christmas sermon on “The Faithfulness of God,” I quoted from a book written by Ben Patterson entitled, Waiting: Finding Hope When God Seems Silent. In reality, all of us experience times when hope is hard to find, when we are hard pressed to hear from God or to understand what He is doing. Certainly, folks in Newtown, CT, are experiencing such a time right now.
In His book, Patterson references two individuals in Scripture who are well-known for their waiting: Job and Abraham. Obviously, Job’s life is the epitome of waiting. If you look up “waiting” in the dictionary it actually says, “See Job.” (And did you know that the word gullible isn’t even in the dictionary?) Job is comprised of 42 chapters. And all of Job’s losses take place in the first 2 chapters. And it isn’t until chapter 38 that Yahweh begins His response to Job. So guess what Job was doing in those 36 chapters in between? He was waiting.
Abraham, also, is a story of waiting. For the first 75 years of his life, Abraham is childless—his wife Sarah is barren. Then, after years of waiting for a child, God makes the promise of Genesis 12 to make him into a great nation. But it isn’t until 25 years later that this promise comes to fruition in the birth of Isaac. What was Abraham doing for 25 years in between? He was waiting.
It would be a stretch to say that Abraham was waiting patiently. In Genesis 15:3 Abraham takes the opportunity to remind God, “You have given me no children.” Sarah also takes part in such complaints when she says in Genesis 16:2, “The LORD has kept me from having children.” In Genesis 17, Abraham laughs at God when He says that Sarah will have a child in her old age. Then in Genesis 18 Sarah gets in on the joke with a good laugh of her own.
But the truth is, we are no different than our spiritual ancestors. We are often impatient in our waiting in the face of broken relationships, joblessness, illness, accidents, financial loss, childlessness, life transitions. Certainly, God wants us to bring these trials to Him. But there is a difference between praying in trust that God is working all things together for our good and the kind of prayer that is more like the kids complaining from the back seat on a long car ride, “Are we there yet!?!”
Waiting just isn’t fun. In fact, waiting can be downright frustrating. However, the difficult truth is that God often uses waiting in our lives to shape our character and develop our trust in Him. As Patterson writes:
One of the surprise “goods” that God is working for us as we wait is the forging of our character. What we become as we wait is at least as important as the thing we wait for. To wait in hope is not just to pass the time until the wait is over. It is to see the time passing as part of the process God is using to make us into the people he created us to be.
Abraham becomes a wonderful example of this truth as we see him grow from his impatient waiting into a man who trusts God even when asked to sacrifice his own son (Genesis 22).
I am reminded of the bumper sticker which reads, “Be patient, God isn’t finished with me yet.” Too true. On the whole, we all need to cut each other some slack, recognizing that we all have to face waiting. But even more than we need patience from others, we need to learn to wait patiently ourselves. This can be the hardest lesson of all.
We all experience waiting. And as followers of Christ, we all share in our wait for His return—a wait which becomes more and more difficult as our world becomes more and more dark. And yet, we hold onto two significant promises from Scripture in the midst of our waiting. First of all, we are never alone. Jesus says, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Second, we are never on our own. For we have a God who faithfully leads those who trust in Him. I conclude with the rich, familiar words of Proverbs 3:5-6,
“Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.”
In Him, Pastor Dan