The Long Wait: Part the Last

So sad! Here is my final post for now ( I think!). I hope you've enjoyed the slightly different fare. And one final hint of my identity: my most tangible long-term goal right now is walking the Camino in Spain.

The Long Wait: Part the Last

The Silence of God by Andrew Peterson

It's enough to drive a man crazy; it'll break a man's faith
It's enough to make him wonder if he's ever been sane
When he's bleating for comfort from Thy staff and Thy rod
And the heaven's only answer is the silence of God

It'll shake a man's timbers when he loses his heart
When he has to remember what broke him apart
This yoke may be easy, but this burden is not
When the crying fields are frozen by the silence of God

And if a man has got to listen to the voices of the mob
Who are reeling in the throes of all the happiness they've got
When they tell you all their troubles have been nailed up to that cross
Then what about the times when even followers get lost?
'Cause we all get lost sometimes...

There's a statue of Jesus on a monastery knoll
In the hills of Kentucky, all quiet and cold
And He's kneeling in the garden, as silent as a Stone
All His friends are sleeping and He's weeping all alone

And the man of all sorrows, he never forgot
What sorrow is carried by the hearts that he bought
So when the questions dissolve into the silence of God
The aching may remain, but the breaking does not
The aching may remain, but the breaking does not
In the holy, lonesome echo of the silence of God

Now, I don’t claim to know what ‘n all God is about in all this waiting business, but I’m pretty sure that some of it has to do with developing a rock solid faith. I’ve noticed that the longer a time of waiting goes on, the more God reveals to me how useless my efforts are to improve myself or do things on my own. In my most painful period of waiting thus far, God took everything away from me that I thought made up who I was--my talents, my relationships, my intellect, even my ability to take care of myself. There was nothing left for me in that place but the raw knowledge that I was absolutely nothing without the love of my gracious Savior. It’s been quite a few years since I have been in that place of abject brokenness, and I can see now that it was the most loving (and painful) thing that God has ever done for me. He took away my self-reliance so that I could only rely on him. In my stubbornness, it was the only way that He could reach me.

In recent years, I have found myself in another holding pattern, waiting for the next step. I didn’t want to, but I have slowly fallen back into that place of apathy and fear of hoping, because the things I have hoped for have either not yet come to be or have been thrown back in my face. Once again, prayers have seemed to bounce off the ceiling over my head and onto the floor instead of rising to the throne of the One who loves me. God has never let me totally give up on Him, but I certainly have felt like giving up on me. Thankfully, through a series of circumstances, God has woken my heart again to His reality and His hope once again. I realized that I was putting my hope in my desires instead of Him (does anyone really understand the difference between hoping FOR and hoping IN?), and lost hold of the reality of His faithfulness and the timelessness of His purposes. I can see that part of the onerousness of waiting comes from my ingrained belief that I am what I do; I can’t DO anything about waiting, and I can’t make anything in my life happen, no matter what they tell me on TV and in self-help books. It seems that only during those times of waiting, if we rest in the silence of God’s heart, can He reveal to us what we truly are to become through His grace.

So even though waiting at the doctor’s office still cramps my style, and I still find myself getting impatient as I wait for fulfillment, I am thankful that God loves me enough to lead me here, in this moment of waiting. And I know that I'm in very good company, since all of creation "has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time (Romans 8:22)," waiting for Christ's redemption of His children. I only pray that I will learn my lessons well and rest on His grace instead of my dreams and abilities. If you, too, find yourself chafing with the pressure of waiting on God, I recommend taking the time to slow down and rest in what God has for you here in the silence. Turn off the TV, log off of Twitter and Facebook, put your ipod away, and practice some active listening. Read some Henri Nouwen or Brennan Manning, do a concordance search through your Bible on the word “wait” (there’s a lot!), and grab someone you trust to talk and pray about what waiting means to you in this moment. God will be faithful to reveal His heart to you and bring you to the place He has for you, and grant you peace along the way. And so, in the words of Larry Hein, “May all your expectations be frustrated, may all your plans be thwarted, may all your desires be withered into nothingness, that you may experience the powerlessness and poverty of a child and sing and dance in the love of God who is Father, Son, and Spirit.”

The Long Wait 2.1

Okay, folks. I know the suspense has been killing you. So without further ado, I present the next installment on this delightfully scintillating discourse on waiting. (And if you're still curious about me, I'll give you one more clue: in the second grade, I wished with all my heart to grow up and be a marine biologist.)

THE LONG WAIT: 2.1

. . .one of the greatest stresses in life is the stress of waiting for God. He brings fulfillment, "because you have kept My command to persevere. . .(Rev. 3:10)"
Oswald Chambers

Sometimes I feel like I have spent my entire life waiting for something. When I was a little kid, I was waiting and waiting to grow up so that I could be cool like the big kids. I waited to go to college so that my “real” life could start. I graduated from college and waited for a purpose or a goal to focus my life on. I have spent a lot of time and energy on waiting to become healthy. But mostly I’ve spent a lot of time waiting on God. Waiting for Him to change my life, me, or the people and world around me. And I can honestly say that for the most part, I’ve hated every minute of that waiting.

The thing is, waiting can feel like death, or being locked in prison. When waiting, there are expectations that are not being fulfilled, because you’re obviously waiting for something, and when that something doesn’t happen, you can start to doubt whether God really cares about what’s going on. Hope gets really hard to hold onto when it doesn’t reach any fulfillment. In Proverbs it states that, “A hope deferred makes a heart sick (13:12).” I don’t know about you, but I’ve spent a lot of time with a sick heart, waiting for things that have seemingly never happened--hopes for myself and for others. And I’ve found that the end result is apathy, bitterness, and a strong desire to not hope about anything. And a total abhorrence of waiting.

However, in latter years I’ve started to get the sneaking suspicion that I’ve got everything totally backwards. I’ve noticed that I am not alone in this business of waiting, either. It seems that all of the great Bible characters that I’ve learned about spent a fair amount of time waiting, too. Abraham waited for a son, Moses waited for a call to action from God and deliverance for his people, Joseph waited to be rescued twice, then waited for reconciliation with his family. The Israelites waited for a promised land over and over again as they were captured, returned, and captured again and again. Even Jesus had to wait thirty years to start his ministry! The exciting thing to me is that God never ever left them to wait forever (minus, of course, the generations of Hebrews who lived in exile for their disobedience, and Moses who never got to see the promised land for the same reason). He waited until the time was right, and rescued, gave, or spurred to action as He saw fit. And when the waiting got to be too much for someone and they acted of their own volition, they made stupid decisions and made God really really angry, like the Israelites at the base of the Mount Sinai (Exodus 32) worshipping the golden calf, or Saul not waiting for Samuel to give a sacrifice before a battle (1 Samuel 13). So there really must be something important to God about waiting.


Tune in next time for part three!