Waiting well

        Waiting...is hard.
         Or maybe I should say, waiting well is hard.  Because, really, we all wait an awful lot, and anybody can wait poorly, right?
         I'm a professional at waiting impatiently, foot tapping, fist clenching, when I get in the loooong, sloooow line at the Harris Teeter.  Or when the person in front of me at the stoplight sits there looong after it's turned green--obviously checking out social media--while the rest of us in line behind them, wait irritatingly, even angrily.
        Then, of course, there's the especially challenging, anxious waiting: waiting to get into the desired school, waiting for the right person to come along to marry...waiting to get pregnant...waiting for the potentially life-altering diagnosis...waiting for healing...waiting for the prodigal to come home...waiting for reconciliation.
        As we wait and wait and wait, we start to wonder...and then to worry.  What if God says "no?"  What if God doesn't come through?  What if the worst happens?  What if I don't have what I need to survive the disappointment?  What if I just can't endure any more of this long, hard siege of waiting?
        Did you notice something about those questions, however?  They all began with "What if...?"  That's so often where we--or at least I--go off the rails and fall into the swamp of despair and doubt. All the "what if's" can literally sap the life and joy and hope right out of you and fill you instead with fear and doubt and despair.
         But you know what?  Maybe when those "what if's" start pounding at the door of our hearts, our minds and wills need to answer firmly with "But God has said..."
       I love what Spurgeon wrote: "Will not the distresses of life and the pangs of death, will not the internal corruptions and the external snares, will not the trials from above and the temptations from beneath all seem but light afflictions when we can hide ourselves beneath the bulwark of 'He has said'?"
       Yes!  We respond to all the "what if's" and fears and doubts that assail us by waiting with God's unfailing promises.  We run to His Word.  We remember His faithfulness.  We trust in His goodness and grace.  We recall how faithful He has been to us in the past.  We recount how God worked and moved in countless ways when His people in the Bible endured plenty of hard waiting of their own.
         Bottom line: if we want to wait well, we must wait with and in God's Word.
        Just a couple of examples: Abraham waited twenty-five years for God to send the long promised son to ancient Abe and his old wife, Sarah.  That's a mighty long time of getting up every morning and hoping, maybe this is the day...and then, by the end of day, saying sadly, nope, not today.  Only to get up the next morning, get busy worshipping, working, cleaning, traveling...and waiting, hoping once again: maybe today? And then, for about 9,125 days straight the answer was, nope, not yet.  That's an awful lot of days of waiting.
        Yet God's Word says, "And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise." (Heb.6:15)
        Andree Sue Peterson writes, "Twenty-five years he waited.  Unglamorous years of eating sand and believing for a son.  Just think of the daily talking to yourself you'd have to do under these conditions to keep waiting for something humanly implausible based only on a word you heard way back when.  Abraham is one of the greatest men in history for simply believing God for a long, long time."  
        Or how about Joseph?  Though God had seemed to give him a vision of his future greatness and authority, Joseph's brothers betrayed him, and thirteen long years he waited in Egypt as a slave and then a forgotten prisoner in a stinking dungeon.  That's 4,745 looong days, says Peterson, "to choose trusting God's word and faithfulness over bailing out of his teenage vision of the bowing sheaves and stars."  How long does it take us to bail?  To lose hope? To start complaining and fretting and doubting?         
        But all those days and months and years for Abraham, for Joseph, for Moses, for Hannah, for Zechariah and Elizabeth...they were never ever forgotten by God.  Every day, every moment, during all that waiting, the Lord was working and moving behind the scenes in countless ways that they could not see and did not know.  But we do...because we know the end of the story.
         Because in our waiting, God is working.  And in our waiting, God is building godly, strong, resilient, persevering, faithful character in us...in our children...in our loved ones...in our friends.
         Does knowing that make it fun to wait?  No sir.  But it makes it worth it.  Because as I've shared before, when God wants to grow a mealy little mushroom--that's here today and gone tomorrow--He takes about six hours.  When He wants to grow a mighty, majestic, towering oak tree--that's here for generations offering shade, stability, and beauty--He takes about sixty years.
         We're all enduring some kind of hard waiting right now...but instead of tumbling into the pit of fearful "what if's" that lead only to doubt and despair, let's turn to God's Word and choose to trust in His promises.  Let's recount His faithfulness.  Let's recall His goodness and grace.  And let's remember that He's working and moving in our lives, in our loved ones' lives, to grow mighty oaks of righteousness and faithfulness.
          I'm willing to wait well with Him for that.  How about you?
          To God be the glory.