Skip to main content

Wait

         Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. (Psalm 27:14)

 

Wait…wait for it… ugh. Why does sixty seconds waiting for the microwave seem like an hour, unless you leave the room to do something, in which case sixty seconds seems like ten. And in spite of evidence that the ability to delay gratification tends to improve one’s likelihood of success, we still can’t seem to tolerate having to wait. I hear of people who complain about having to use a self-check at a grocery store, and while I agree that the stores should have more cashiers, if I have to choose between a self-check that’s open and a cashier with a line, you can bet I’ll choose the former.

It's not that I’m entirely impatient. There are times I am more patient with people (other people tell me) than I should be, and if I have a book to listen to, a craft to do, or research, I can be very patient and focused. There are times when I’ll wait – possibly too long, refusing to take action when I should. But if I don’t have something to do, patience goes out the window.

I suspect impatience, and the performance expectations that fuels it, is one of those snares mentioned yesterday. So it’s not really a surprise that “wait for the Lord” is followed by “be strong and take heart” which is followed by a repetition of “wait for the Lord.” Waiting is hard work. But, it’s actually one of the snares that we can work on more easily than others, because we can set ourselves up to wait, whether on the Lord or on something else – it’s still practice waiting.

Some people have suggested that if we find ourselves being impatient about a stoplight, going around the block and coming back to the light, forcing ourselves to take longer. We can choose to get in a checkout line with a cashier. We can set timers that tell us when we are allowed to do something we want to do. We can practice waiting, and we probably should. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The List

              Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,   through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;   perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)           Think about it. We have been justified. At least, we could be justified if we stopped insisting that our justification be based on our merits. We have peace with God, or could have peace if we stopped throwing temper tantrums. We have gained access into grace i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

Listen To Him

              The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him . (Deuteronomy 18:15)           Today, we switch from Jesus’ claims of “I am” to prophecies made about Him. My Bible platform is starting in Deuteronomy. I’d start in Genesis, where we would learn that the one who would save us would be a descendant of Eve (Genesis 3:15), of Noah (by default), Abram and Sara(Genesis 12:1-3). Isaac (Genesis 17:19), Jacob (Genesis 25:23), Judah (Genesis 29:8), and David (II Samuel 7:12-16). There were also references to a new covenant (Jer. 31:31-34; Ezek. 36:22-32). In addition, there were prophecies about when and where the prophet/Messiah would be born and what would happen to him.           Of course, naysayers will claim that Jesus’ life was retrofitted or reverse enginee...
Post a Comment
Read more