Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Is waiting enough?

When I was younger, I had far less patience than I do now (No comments from my mom or my wife please). In fact, my mom told me that "I can't wait" were the three most used words in my young, impatient vocabulary. "I can't wait until I get a bike" or "I can't wait until I graduate from elementary school" or "I can't wait until I have a have a mustache". The list of "I can't waits" was endless. Without a suitable intervention, this three-word mantra evolved into an ingrained philosophy of impatience. "I can't wait to graduate from college" or "I can't wait go to grad school or "I can't wait to have a job." I was living a life that had become a slave to benchmarks.


In looking back on this period, I came to several humbling revelations. First, life does not need my help to fly by. Life is perfectly fine with taking all of my unused and unappreciated measurements of time, balling them up into unusable currencies, and letting them roam the recesses of my brain, to be retrieved only by guilt and angst.

Second, we must truly appreciate the instances when the Lord has asked us to wait on Him. I know that I deeply struggle with waiting on the Lord. I struggle with listening to Him telling me to wait. I also struggle with asking for the grace and patience to be able to wait. I am sure that we would all agree that a good Christian is able to wait on the Lord when they are asked to.

Finally and most importantly, if we are to truly understand the wonderful relationship that the Lord, our father, wants with us... we have to do more than just wait. We also need to APPRECIATE the period in which we have been called to wait. Let me put it another way... I would be so insanely upset if the Lord asked me to wait on Him and I was too impatient to see how he was growing and blessing me during this time.

Waiting on the Lord should not be considered something that stretches our faith but rather appreciated as an opportunity to receive a wonderful gift from our Father.

gt



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