Wait…Wait

My friend Debbie has the sweetest chocolate lab named Gelato. He is an enthusiastic, BIG doggy who loves his treats! What he doesn’t like though, is waiting for his treats.

Obviously, you cannot have a giant lab jumping all over you for a treat, so Debbie has taught him to sit and wait. She will say, “Wait, wait.” Then when he is given permission, he finally gets to take the treat from her hand.

To be honest, I can totally relate with Gelato. I have a feeling that he does not enjoy the “wait, wait” part of receiving his treats. Neither do I enjoy the times when it seems that that is all I am hearing from God!

You see, I like things to happen immediately. If my friend is sick, I would like her to be well now. If I am having teenager trouble, I want things to be fixed now. If I am uncertain about my finances for the month, I want it solved–you guessed it–now! However, after all this time, I have figured out that God does not necessarily work that way. Sometimes His plan is for me to wait a long time for an answer. I have also learned that He is not doing this out of unkindness. In fact, it is quite the opposite. I usually end up learning more in these times of waiting than I would have any other way. The waiting draws me closer to God as I wrestle and pray, and yes, question. God is not afraid of our questions and will speak in the waiting if we let Him.

This waiting on God is nothing new. The stories in the Bible seem to move at quite a fast pace, but if you pay attention to the time frames recorded, the Bible characters knew something about waiting. Noah spent around 120 years waiting for the flood. Abraham waited, albeit imperfectly, for his promised heir for 25 years. Moses spent 40 years in between his times in Egypt just hanging out in the desert and watching sheep! This is probably why there are so many verses in the Bible about waiting on God and being still while we do it. This seems to be the thing that I hear from God most frequently, “Be still and know that I am God.” God is gracious enough not to follow that up with a direct, “and you are not!” But I still get the picture.

The difference between Gelato and me (besides our species, of course) is that he knows what his treat is going to be. His keen sense of smell tells him what is coming. In my case, I am regularly surprised at the outcome of my waiting times. Rarely do they end the way I thought they would, and this is a good thing! God’s way is always better than mine.

So the next time I hear God saying, “Wait…wait,” I am going to think of Gelato and try to wait just as expectantly for good things from my Heavenly Father.

“Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” Psalm 27:14