Photo by Juan Pablo Arenas on Pexels.com

“Hate to wait” is life’s motto for much of humanity, not least myself. I fret over my finances when a client is slow with payment. I think unkindly of customers who hold up the coffee line asking what “macchiato” means. And I get as red as the traffic light when it changes just as I finally reach the intersection.

Waiting for little things drives up our blood pressure. Waiting for big things can drive us to despair. Will my biopsy come back with reassuring results? Will I be the one chosen for that perfect job? Will I ever get married? Will we ever be able to have children?

And the grand-prize question: Does God even care if I’m stuck in my current, boring, stressful, miserable, hopeless-feeling situation for the rest of my life?

Trying to Force the Issue

Thoughts of, “If God really meant what He said, what’s taking Him so long?!?” were likely going through Sarah’s head at the time of Genesis 19. At age seventy-five, she was childless in a culture that valued large families as much as material wealth. Worse, her husband, Abraham, had God’s direct promise of a son–but she couldn’t see any solid evidence God intended to keep His word, at least not by the usual means of husband + wife = baby. Impatient, hurting, suspecting that God had probably turned His back on her at least, she remembered the custom of providing a husband with a second wife/surrogate mother so he, at least, wouldn’t have to go without offspring. And she gave Abraham her personal handmaid for that purpose–without anyone asking God what He thought of that idea.

Although Sarah’s approach “worked”–Abraham’s first son, Ishmael, was born–it didn’t relieve her own feelings of inadequacy and rejection. It just added a dose of jealousy and bitterness that made her more miserable than ever.

God’s Time Is Not Our Time

Sarah didn’t know how to “wait on the Lord.” Neither do most of us. We look at the ticking clock, the turning calendar pages, the weeks/months/years where nothing seems to change except that we get older and more worn out; and if we think of God’s “wait” command at all, it’s usually with the silent grumble, “Easy for Him to say; He’s got forever!” Perhaps nowhere is it more obvious that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts than in how we perceive “time available.” Aware of our mortality, we rush to grab a world of instant gratifications before time runs out–while often neglecting our greater dreams because it’ll take so long to achieve them we doubt we’ll have time left to enjoy the results.

Well, Sarah eventually had her own son, Isaac, and saw him grow into a young man. And God promises that if we use our time wisely, He will bring us great rewards in His timing (cf. Galatians 6:9).

How to Wait

Being currently in the position of wondering whether any literary agent/publisher/customer base will ever want my devotional book series (Sunday afternoon encouragement via original rhyming poetry), I like the way Jeanette Hanscome, author of Suddenly Single Mom, puts it in describing her twenty-year journey to a “published author” dream become reality: “This might sound shocking, but I am now grateful for the frustrating timing. … Now that I was in a more professionally and emotionally mature place, I saw what a disaster those other projects might have been if accepted.” No matter how dead ends she hit, she kept working, kept trying, kept learning and praying–kept “waiting” in the most active, effective sense of the word.

Why not take your focus off what you wish would happen right now, long enough to thank God for His trustworthiness and ask Him what He wants you to do right now?