Loving The Wait

I've met very few people in life who can openly admit to being impatient. I never considered myself an impatient person but that was probably too generous an opinion of myself. Nothing brings patience into perspective quite like waiting for something you really want. Then and only then do you realise just how much life can try you. Someone told me recently "good things take time and happen naturally", such plain words were so hard to swallow because although I agreed with it in theory, I petulantly wondered why things couldn't happen immediately. "Ain't nobody got time for that" has increasingly become a way of life.

"But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day." 2 Peter 3:8 

This is one of those verses I don't know how to feel about. Some days it feels ever so literal. At some point iin life each of us will be conscious of the passing of time; with each passing birthday, each gray hair and fine line, death, career progress or lack thereof, biological clocks, goals attained or not attained, growing children.. These processes make us resistant and somewhat wistful to the passing of time, wishing we had more of it. Certain phases feel thrust upon us and we would gladly wait until we are ready.

Every season in life is punctuated by waiting. Some more so than others. Yet forbearance remains one of the most elusive qualities in our character. To one extent, many of us can bear to wait patiently for a meal, an exam result, a baby to be born, because there is some certainty to what we are waiting for and some predictability to how long we may have to wait. However, when we have to wait for a cure, an answer to prayer, an apology, a husband or wife, an answer to a proposal, a job, an opportunity to showcase our talent, our purpose to be revealed, for that person to just get it.. every day truly does feel like a thousand years. And yet it's in this season of waiting that we realise what we are made of. There is something about waiting, especially waiting indefinitely that brings us to the humbling or frustrating realisation that the precious little thing called time is not under our control. The end of the year and the beginning often illicits some sort of sentimentality in most of us. We long for days past that we cannot get back; and then we long for days to come with the yearning that things will be better. We know that we cannot predict tomorrow or even next year but this does not stop us from trying. We plan, dream, pray and resign ourselves to waiting. The Greek used two words to describe time: chronos and kairos. Chronos refers to minutes, seconds, days and hours- the measurable aspects of time. Kairos refers to an appointed, opportune time or due season. In our years on earth, we experience the drag, the lull of the ordinary uninspiring days (chronos) interspersed with momentous, memorable events (kairos) and sometimes cannot help but feel trapped in between. So how then, ought we to live? Just discontentedly waiting to be rescued from the mundane, waiting until our next breakthrough, or for the moment we are swept off our feet, or get the dream job, or are healed of that deadly disease? From that perspective it all seems rather pointless. Today in the world around us there is in inescapable reality of pain and suffering. So we wait, in the bigger picture, for the redemption that the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ will bring. In John Piper's interview titled 'How Christ Sensitises Us To Reality' he states poignantly: 

One of the most amazing things about becoming a Christian is that it awakens you to more sorrow. You come to Christ and you are not naïve. You suddenly wake up to pain. Of course there is pain for unbelievers, but they have no sense of how big it is, how horrible it is, or how long it can endure. To be a Christian is to be awake to cancer and birth defects and profound mental disabilities and divorce and child abuse including abortion and terrorism and earthquakes and tsunamis and racial hostilities and prejudices and white-collar crime and sex trafficking and poverty and hunger and a thousand daily frustrations that make life very hard. Every Christian is increasingly sensitized to these things... If you think, “I have got to have all of the sadness out of my life — I have got to get all of the sorrow and brokenness out of my life — then I might be happy,” you won’t have any. You will never get all of the sorrow and all of the brokenness out of your life. The more you love, the more you hurt.

I propose however, that mind-blowing moments are not sustainable. We were not made to live from thrill to thrill, triumph to triumph. Character was meant to be built in-between, in the trenches of suffering and in the faithful patience of enduring the day to day. Comfort and certainty is not as good for us as we think it is. Something in all of us hungers and thirsts for greatness, relevance, significance and fulfilment. So we search for it in every day and fighting disillusionment with each passing day yet knowing that the answer lies much nearer than we dared believe. In my experience, there are three ways to wait and on my more temperamental days I sometimes go through all three in one day.

Waiting despondently

Andrew Murray once wrote: "It is not the yoke but resistance to the yoke that makes it heavy." Hating the wait will often lead to despair. Struggling against circumstances or a season we should yield to makes waiting seem like toil. A focus on our circumstances can consume us so fully that we cease to see any way out, we wait but will little faith or patience that our waiting will be alleviated. This looks different for all of us, it could be hating your job or hating unemployment, hating singleness or hating marriage and ultimately throwing oneself into the arms of compromise. This kind of despair results from the belief that we should get what we want when we want it and the fact that we haven't received it implies that God is either unfair, punishing or non-existent altogether. We become controlled by our desires, dissatisfied and devoid of joy.

Waiting distractedly

Sometimes it's easiest to fill those dull drab days with any kind of distraction we can find to stop us from mentally preoccupying ourselves with the absence of the thing we really want. Entertainment, work, sport, relationships, anything that can engage our minds. This kind of waiting may even seem functional, even productive and less obsessive than waiting despairingly. But careful examination of your heart will reveal that you've replaced the object of your waiting with another activity that has ultimately done nothing to curb your restlessness. This is a kind of abandoned hope that stops praying and just nonchalantly says "If God wants this for me he will give it to me" which at first glance seems like submission, but in actual fact is a loss of faith in the power and nearness of God.

Waiting expectantly

This is the approach of surrender. Not most people's favourite word because who really wants to relinquish control over the timing of their lives and desires..? It is acknowledging that God is the author of time and he is not our genie. It means we are ready, waiting and watching for him to move in our lives but we are also being faithful where we are. It is a posture of heart that says God I know you hear me, I know you see me and I know that at the appointed time, deliverance will come. It is where striving ceases and trust begins.

All creatures look to you to give them their food at the proper time. When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things. Psalm 104:27-28
 
It is trusting that the dream he has put in your heart will come to pass.
For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay. Habakkuk 2:3

It is looking to God with the assurance that he is coming, all wrongs will be made right, all sorrow vanquished and all desires will be most fulfilled in him.  
Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains. You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near. James 5:7-8

I wish I could tell you with absolute certainty that you will definitely get that thing that you're waiting for. Maybe you will, maybe you will not. But there is so much good in store for you today and most of all, in eternity. Believing all these things allows us to be faithful where we are and takes our eyes off the next moment and instead appreciate the right now. Where we learn not only to tolerate the wait but to thrive in it, to trust in it, to love it. Very few lessons are realised within the experience, they are realised in the aftermath. Be patient with the process, be patient with others and be patient with God, whose patience with you is infinite. Cherish the ordinary miracles.

I'll end with this quote, for your meditation:

“I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” -Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet