Waiting on God

Wait for the Lord;

Be strong and let your heart take courage;

Yes, wait for the Lord.

Psalm 27:14

Remember dial-up? The unforgettable tone and that lengthy sign-on process. Now, imagine that all of your internet reverted back to that old school AOL. Could you even go back? Could you handle the wait time for logging in? For loading every page? Without exaggeration, if any given webpage takes over one second to load, I start clicking the mouse and moving it around in some kind of digital dance that simply must speed up the process. One second, I can’t even wait that long. How about you?

The internet is no perfect analogy for life, especially our spiritual life. However, it can be useful to help reveal some patterns of thought and behavior. And ironically, with the world at our finger tips, we simply no longer have time to wait. But that raises the question, what are we to do when what we long for cannot be obtained with a little wifi and blue light? What are we to do when we must wait—and when we do wait—and yet still do not receive? 

Waiting is a dangerous game, it can be hard to know if we are even playing it right. If it’s starting to look like chess, why am I wearing a helmet and shoulder pads? But then again, maybe the waiting game is really not all that mysterious in and of itself. It’s more of a question of the finish line. When will it come? What will it look like in the end? Will I really ever get there? I’m following the rules… but it is not feeling any closer. 

Life experience and common sense teach us that not all waiting pays off. Some healings are just not going to come. Some apostates will refuse to return. Some prayers prove the world is not in our hands. But if we are Christians, we must reject any lies that say this is all an act performed on an empty stage; as if our groanings and longings, our shouts and our cries, our asking and our waiting are all in vain. His ways are not our ways, but there is no doubt that He is still our Father. There is no denying that our good Father knows how to give good gifts to His children. 

And so, we wait. As we wait, we watch. As we watch, we anticipate. As we anticipate, we strive. As we strive, we rest. When we finally rest, we are probably getting close. Aren’t gifts so much about the timing of them? That first car makes way more sense at 16 than at 6 or 96. Isn’t instruction and formation just as much about the when and how than as to the what? 

There is profound section in Corrie Ten Boom’s The Hiding Place that captures a bit of God’s timing. How he has a tendency to not give us what we need, until we truly need it. Such an idea has much overlap with all of our waiting on our heavenly Father. The section occurs while Corrie is still young and has first encountered death. Her sister Nollie is with her in her bedroom just as their father comes in to tuck them into bed. Corrie begins the dialogue: 

But that night as he stepped through the door, I burst into tears. “I need you!” I sobbed. “You can’t die! You can’t!”

Beside me on the bed Nollie set up. “We went to see Mrs. Hoog,” she explained. “Corrie didn’t eat her supper or anything.”

 Father sat down on the edge of the narrow bed. “Corrie,” he began gently, “when you and I go to Amsterdam—when do I give you your ticket?”

I sniffed a few times, considering this.

“Why, just before we get on the train.”

“Exactly. And our wise Father in heaven knows when we’re going to need things, too. Don’t run out ahead of him, Corrie. When the time comes that some of us will have to die, you will look into your heart and find the strength you need—just in time.”