Waiting Well
Waiting sucks… There’s nothing I like waiting for, especially not a red light to turn green, much less waiting for a financial breakthrough, healing, or reconciliation. I want it all now and when I don’t get it now it’s hard to navigate the space between where I am and where I want to be.
The enemy loves to fill the wait with worry because worry worships the problem that he handed us and most of us accept it like a little trinket that sits on a mantel to be given attention and admiration when it can do nothing of worth. It may have eyes, but it cannot see. It may have ears, but it cannot hear. It may have a mouth, but it cannot speak. It may have hands, but it cannot feel. In the same way, our imaginations so grand and so vain give words, works, and worship to worry. Our relentless thoughts, and our futile vision of our future, authors outcomes of gloom and doom.
I have faced the wait time and time again. In years past, I would welcome worry with open arms. It was a playground for my mind giving me ample space to explore endless possibilities. Although vast, they would quickly turn to darkness leaving me feeling hopeless, anxious, and alone.
The road is familiar for many as we do not often consider that there are more ways than one to wait. Where the enemy offers us a shiny idol of worry, the Lord instead gives us his ears to hear, eyes to see, hands to feel, and mouth to speak forth his word to prepare our futures, provide pathways for our healing, and offer us comfort and hope in the unknown. As we trust in him, who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving we receive a peace that surpasses our limited understanding of our wait.
Worship to God in the wait brings light into dark places, while worry gives attention to worthless deeds of darkness and distances us from Deity. Worship values today and trusts tomorrow will be lavished with divine providence, while worry spends our days carelessly considering what may never happen. Worry is not worshiping, it is worthless!
Wait will come and stay longer than we want it to, but worry in the wait no longer weighs me down. Worship leads the way and carries me through the valley. None of us know what tomorrow holds, however, we do have a gift in today, in the presence of God, trusting the endless possibilities of wonder he has prepared for our futures.
The choice is always there in the wait.
Will you wait well?
