waiting
The reading from my devotional today pretty much sums up the spiritual lesson/theme that I have been learning this past year (make that past five years!). It's based on Psalm 27:14:
"Why does the Bible so insist on our waiting? We're given instruction after instruction to 'wait on God.' There's story after story about someone who wanted to rush Him--Abraham, Saul, Peter, and many, many more. Why are we always being told--not so subtly, either--to slow down?
Because our timing is almost invariably faster than God's. His agenda for a situation includes deep workings and intricate details. We just aim for superficial symptoms. He intends to grind His grain very, very fine--an excruciating work on our character that will not let coarseness remain. Or, to use another metaphor, He burns His ore long and hot, removing not just the impurities that can be seen with the naked eye, but all that exist. We usually don't care about such thoroughness. We want to get out of our difficult situation quickly or to achieve our successes suddenly. For us, time is of essence. For God, time is essential."
This distinction--between God's timeline and mine--has come up repeatedly in my quiet times and in my prayer life this past year. It's a lesson that every time I think I've grasped, another situation comes up to make me realize that I need to learn it all over again. It's easy to look back and reflect on God's perfect timing; but when you are in the midst of waiting, still trying to surrender and trust, I find myself wanting to rush him a bit. I want guarantees, security, to be able to count on something turning out. But God wants me to count on him, and not a particular outcome. In this process, I am always invariably confronted with the fact of his wisdom, his ways being beyond mine, and how short-sighted I am. Yet I'm still often impatient. I doubt, I complain, I worry, I cry... I spend a lot of wasted time trying to reason or rationalize different possible outcomes. I try to "figure him out." But God remains inscrutable, because he is God. Thankfully, he is patient with me.
"Why does the Bible so insist on our waiting? We're given instruction after instruction to 'wait on God.' There's story after story about someone who wanted to rush Him--Abraham, Saul, Peter, and many, many more. Why are we always being told--not so subtly, either--to slow down?
Because our timing is almost invariably faster than God's. His agenda for a situation includes deep workings and intricate details. We just aim for superficial symptoms. He intends to grind His grain very, very fine--an excruciating work on our character that will not let coarseness remain. Or, to use another metaphor, He burns His ore long and hot, removing not just the impurities that can be seen with the naked eye, but all that exist. We usually don't care about such thoroughness. We want to get out of our difficult situation quickly or to achieve our successes suddenly. For us, time is of essence. For God, time is essential."
This distinction--between God's timeline and mine--has come up repeatedly in my quiet times and in my prayer life this past year. It's a lesson that every time I think I've grasped, another situation comes up to make me realize that I need to learn it all over again. It's easy to look back and reflect on God's perfect timing; but when you are in the midst of waiting, still trying to surrender and trust, I find myself wanting to rush him a bit. I want guarantees, security, to be able to count on something turning out. But God wants me to count on him, and not a particular outcome. In this process, I am always invariably confronted with the fact of his wisdom, his ways being beyond mine, and how short-sighted I am. Yet I'm still often impatient. I doubt, I complain, I worry, I cry... I spend a lot of wasted time trying to reason or rationalize different possible outcomes. I try to "figure him out." But God remains inscrutable, because he is God. Thankfully, he is patient with me.
posted by mariyaya | 6:53 PM
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