Value in Waiting

…continued from yesterday…Learning through waiting (from Soul Storm: finding God amidst disaster)

Beyond what we have already investigated previously, Milton’s poem (see yesterday’s blog) offers us some very practical insights into God’s waiting room.  These truths give us some concrete foundational instruction upon which we can build our lives when we find ourselves in God’s waiting room.

 1.  It is worth the wait

Anytime God does not give us what we want when we want it, we must remember it is for our good.  We cannot fathom what God has in store for us in the unfolding of His plans.  If we can keep ourselves from attempting to direct His hand so often we will find ourselves much more at peace.  Any perceived delay is in reality God’s perfect timing.   Much greater is the joy for those who have worked, prayed, pushed, and hoped over the long haul.  In God’s plan, a pleasure postponed is in reality a joy increased.  How thrilled were the Red Sox to finally win the World Series again after “all those years”?  How thrilled will the people of a rebuilt New Orleans be when the Saints finally win the Super Bowl?  O.k., maybe some things are meant to never happen, but you get the point.  The scriptures tell us, “No eye has seen, no mind conceived what God has prepared for those that love Him”.  It’s worth the wait.

 2.  There is strength in the wait

Typically, men and women of great inner strength developed that gusto through a great deal of time and hardship.  There are no shortcuts to greatness.  Great strength is the exception because so few are willing to “wait” for their time.  It is too tempting to settle for mediocrity which comes so much quicker and so much easier.  How does a world class athlete get to that place where the body performs so perfectly that it looks effortless?  Years of conditioning, training, and pain are the requirement for that kind of accomplishment.  When a man or woman of God endures what seems like endless suffering, and in the face of that suffering exhibit marvelous grace, it is a thing of beauty.  That kind of strength comes from a heart dedicated to waiting on God.  The strength to wait on Him settles in when we let go of our craving for ease and comfort.  That is a hard thing for Americans.  Who has not been astounded by stories like those of Joni Ericson Tada and Corrie Ten Boom?  These women have demonstrated Godly strength in the face of terrifying difficulty.  As we surrender ourselves, our hopes, ambitions, understanding of life, and all that we are to God, we find hope even in places of hardship and we find a supernatural strength welling up within us.  We can make it through.

3.      There is character in the wait

Have you seen the movie “Mr. Holland’s Opus?”  Mr. Holland became a high school music teacher by default, but ultimately came to find his life’s purpose in instilling vision, passion, and a love of learning in the kids he taught.  At the end of the movie Mr. Holland is let go from his job of many years and he is heart- broken.  He is tempted to question if his career meant anything at all.  This man, who early in life aspired to be a great composer, is now at the end of his journey as a teacher and is feeling totally dispensable.  As he is gathering his things from his office and leaving the school campus for the last time he hears noise coming from the auditorium.  With his wife tagging along he ventures into the auditorium to see what is going on.  What he walks into is a testament to the power of character, his character.  The auditorium is full of students, current and those from years gone by.  They are all there to celebrate a life lived with character.  Though Mr. Holland never made it as a composer, he made a difference in the lives of countless youth.  His true Opus, they tell him, are the lives he transformed.  I have watched it 20 times and never once with a dry face.  People, as we go through this life, we must remember that our character is what is most important.  “What does it profit a man if he gains the world and yet loses his soul?”  If we abandon character for selfish ambition we miss the boat.  Any legacy we leave will stand or fall based upon our character.  It is not about the size of our house or bank account, and it not about the toys in the garage.  All of that, as we have seen, can go ten feet under in a matter of hours.  When all our things are lost and we as a people get “displaced”, what is inside still remains.  When all we have left is what we see in the mirror reality hits home.  Character of soul is what matters.  The character and integrity of the structure or our soul is what will determine how we weather the storm. 

      4.  There is grace in the wait

Milton, who gradually “watched” his sight diminish and eventually totally leave him, wrestled intensely with God’s purpose in this illness.  At the end of the day God gives him a remarkable glimpse of His grace.  God birthed in Milton an amazing poem that crystallizes the heavenly perspective on disaster. Milton comes to understand that we do not need to have it all “put together” to be used by God.  He comes to see that we have value before the Creator for just showing up!  God’s ability to love us and to use us is not hindered by our disability!  As we hunger and thirst to know what amazing accomplishments lie ahead for us, at the end of the day, what really matters is just that—waiting on God.  This waiting, Godly waiting, amounts to no more than a joyful, restful, strong, grace filled acceptance that God’s agenda for us is enough.  It is up to Him to show the extravagance of His grace in our lives.  As we cooperate with that purpose, waiting on him is life and that abundantly.  In the rubble of disaster, the message is clear; the clock has not run out on us.  God is not finished.  The best may be ahead.  Remember, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, was written while he was blind!  And the rest as they say “Is history.”  He is the treasure hidden in a field, the pearl of great price, the beginning and the end, our all in all-and he is worth waiting on!

5.      Waiting reveals truth, absolute truth

We live in a culture overcome with opinion.  Just listen to all of the opinions on how the city of New Orleans ought to be rebuilt.  There are fights over re-entry, FEMA contracts, which areas of the city to bulldoze and which to rebuild, who is to blame for the havoc, who gets press time and who does not, and fights over who will pay for all of this mess.  Beyond opinions on this disaster, Americans embrace the idea that truth is relative and each opinion is as valuable as the next.  The contemporary American view is that all beliefs are equal.  Essentially, as a culture, we are making the ridiculous assumption that no absolute truth exists.  This is, of course, stated by our talk-show host-philosophers, absolutely.  What God shows us, however, in the waiting room of disaster, is that we all crave one sure answer for our pain and loss.  At the juncture between dreams and nightmares, truth is cried out for.  We all want the dream life, we all want protection from the nightmare.  We all give ourselves credit for the good, and we are too tempted to blame Mother Nature for the bad.  In moments of misery opinions just do not carry the same weight as firm truth.  Truth is what we all need when all is lost.  Mother’s who are losing a child to a terminal illness want someone to make sense of things for them.  Adult children that have lost an elderly parent as a result of someone’s neglect and failure to evacuate a nursing home prior to the flood waters arriving want answers.  Pain, loss, and waiting thrust us in the direction of God.  Just as we sit with family and friends in hospital waiting rooms while our loved one undergoes a life-threatening surgical procedure, so we also wait with a hunger for hope of good news from above when all our hopes are fading away.  One friend, whose business and life were dramatically affected by the hurricane, recently told me, “I am just looking for some hope”.  Disasters propel us to find the source of hope and truth.  The truth is that there is hope.  That hope is found only in the Truth.  Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life”.  He is absolutely our only hope.

I have come to see the reality of these practical truths throughout my life as I have wrestled with God during my own personal disasters.  So many times I have thought, “This is another roadblock, another step backward.”  In reality, as I look back now, God was and is at work.  God was and is at work in the lives of all of those impacted by hurricane Katrina.  Our view of God, as was the case for Milton, is being re-worked as we deal with this darkness.  Our prayer must be that God give us spiritual eyes to see what He is saying to us.  In our own spiritual blindness we seem to be missing the point, I am afraid.  Just as Milton could not understand how God’s plan for this great mind, writer, and poet could possibly unfold amidst blindness, we too lack eyes to see what God is up to in this present disaster.  Could it be that God has placed us in the waiting room of life in order that we might think more seriously, as a city, a people, a nation, about whom God is and how far we are falling short of His call to us?  All the re-building timelines and projections point to this being a very long wait.  It will take years of extremely hard work to get the city of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region moving again.  For our own good and the good of our county, we ought to use this time in wait to reflect upon where we have been and where we are going as a country.  Now, just days following the devastation of Katrina we are hearing about the possibility of the coming bird flu pandemic.  What if another huge storm is ahead for a nation without eyes to see and ears to hear the voice of God?  As bad as the devastation of Katrina has been, all the experts are now telling us it could have been much worse.  If God does not have our undivided attention now, what will it take?  God’s ways, as Milton found out, are indeed justifiable.  Like Job and Milton, we often view ourselves higher than we ought to.  We are not the end of all things.  When we find ourselves at the mercy of “nature” this reality comes painfully close to home.  Standing amidst such catastrophe we have no power as humans to “speak” our desires into existence as some preachers or “positive thinkers” might suggest.  As was true for John Milton is true for us, no man centered theology will fix this mess.  God alone can make sense of this.  The answers are there if we are willing to listen.  In moments like these we must simply recognize that His ways are higher than our ways, humbly throw ourselves before Him, and trust in His grace.  Only a word spoken from God can heal this kind of hurt. 

Bruce Smith

optimuslife.org

This entry was posted on 16. January 2008 at 09:45 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.