Waiting…for Something

For most of us, we hate waiting. We don’t know what to do. We are uncomfortable not doing something, anything. We are deeply afraid that waiting in life is pointless. In fact, we disdain waiting so much we have made waiting for things nearly extinct. In order to avoid waiting in line, we have expedited goods through online buying. We distract ourselves while waiting for our food by looking at our phones. Instead of discovering how to wait well, we have eliminated waiting. Easy solution. Ambiguity for us is torturous.

We spend the majority of our lives waiting. Whether we like it or not, we cannot eliminate waiting. We may be waiting for answers, waiting for fulfilled desires, waiting for a relationship or waiting for change. Wherever we find ourselves, we cannot escape waiting. I have waited decades for a family, years to know God’s clear direction for my life, and countless nights to be more than who I am.

One thing I have observed in church is that we are drawn to leaders who model arrival.  We search out people who can give us hope that arriving at the goal is possible. We want to be assured that the process of waiting will not be long. We want to know that it will all be worth it.

This tension between where we are and where we want to be is often termed the sanctification gap. For church leaders, it is much easier to preach the spiritual ideal than it is to talk about how to respond when the answers of life are not as clear. It is easier to talk about where we should be than to honestly converse about where we are. Fear drives ministries to not talk about the process of waiting because for most ministries waiting is understood as inactivity of those involved in their ministries.

However, anything we are made to do in life will lead us through a period of waiting.  In A Million Little Ways: Uncover the Art You Were Made to Live, Freeman describes the process of waiting in regards to releasing our craft:

We think that because we don’t feel courageous, it means we aren’t ready to show up. But courage is not the absence of fear. If you wait to feel courageous before you release your art, you might be waiting forever. When it comes to courage, we’re often looking for the wrong emotion.  Courage is about more than simply believing in yourself, more than making art with confidence and living life without fear. Courage, I’m discovering, happens in the deep and secret place of the spirit, the place where my life is joined with God’s.

There is a key to waiting well. God has something for us in those desert times. The key is this: we must see that waiting reveals truth.

Waiting reveals our real motivation, our vulnerabilities, and our unwanted tendencies. Our response to the truth will determine how well we wait. To wait well is to see how God is revealing what is driving our anxiety or to see what is defining our goals of life. If we avoid facing the truth, we will forever be chased by the fear of slowing down.

There is something we will find in waiting. We find that God is waiting for us.

When we discover this truth, we are able to move forward in freedom. We find that waiting is transformed into a place of embracing life.