What Are You Waiting For?

One way or another, waiting, when done correctly is an intense activity.

Little kids wait for Christmas, longing to find out what is in, and play with whatever is in, those boxes wrapped to enhance anticipation.

We wait--or at least we used to, and should again--for marriage.  There is a strange mix of utter exhilaration, dread, awareness that this is unknown, but it surety it is an unknown "I want to know."

We wait for the other shoe to drop, not knowing how things will turn out, but knowing that they need to come to some conclusion.  

We wait on the results of a critical medical procedure, knowing the word could be good or bad--three possibilities: bad, good, or continued unknowing.  The waiting gets so hard that we would prefer even the bad over the unknown.

Not all people who put in time before something happens wait.  Though the time between supper and breakfast is typically the longest spell between meals in my day, I don't wait for breakfast.  I sleep.  Waiting involves not only the passage of time, but a certain recognition.  I think it is the recognition that something isn't quite right--sometimes, that something is very wrong.

Toys don't belong in boxes.  They ought to be in the joyful hands of girls and boys.

That couple so much love, long to share that love in the most intimate--though unknown--of ways.  When the time is right, it will be right.  Behind their starry eyes they know.

We long for our world to make sense.  One of our earliest words is, "Why?"

To truly wait one must recognize, or sense the imbalance, the out-of-place-ness, the un-rightness  of the present state.  Truly waiting sharpens our awareness, and refines our sense of what is best.  The great temptation is to quit waiting too soon, to accept something not as good rather than to wait for that which is best.  We grab the teaspoon of satisfaction rather than wait for the bucket brimming with gratification--delayed, as seen by our eager timetable.

 

Those of us who follow the God of the Bible must do a lot of waiting.  As Cornelius Plantinga so eloquently points out this world is Not The Way It is Supposed To Be.  Paul tells us that all creation "waits eagerly."  There is a "futility," a "slavery" and a "corruption" that afflicts our world, and we in it.  Solomon saw it and for much of his life refused to wait.  He shoveled countless teaspoons of satisfaction, so called, into the gaping maw of his desire, only to find that it didn't work.  

The conclusion of Solomon the philosopher, Paul the Theologian, and John, who reveled in the wonder of God's love, is all the same.  

WAIT!  

Only the Lord can set right the imbalance, reveal the unknown, and, without limit,  provide that for which we were created.  See, Romans 8, Ecclesiastes 1, 2, &12:13, and 1 John 2:28-3:3.

It's STTA.