Lynns Musings

15 November 2008

WAITING

This is one of my most precious pictures...a few years back my nephew, Jared and I went to New York for a week together...his first missionary trip! - I took this photo of Jared as we waited for the train to take us into central New York...

These past few months have been filled with masses of travel and yesterday while waiting in Dubai for my connecting flight home I got to watching people and started to muse a bit on the word "WAITING" ... and how difficult and frustrating that can be at times...be it for a plane, train, in traffic jams on the motorway, a bank queue, food in a restaurant etc etc... and then there are other "waitings"... like, waiting for the birth of a child or a life partner or the results of tests from a doctor etc etc...and we cry out as King David did in the Psalm 70 " Make haste to help me"

But what is so critical in all the waiting is to know God is at work in our lives in all the waiting...developing those hard to achieve virtues of dependence, kindness, patient endurance, humility, to name a few

I love the passage in Isa 40:28-31...
Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no-one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.
...and suddenly it all seems worth it....

I read an article a while back and loved the quote...not too sure who the author was...
"What a chapter might be written of God's delays! It is the mystery of the art of educating human spirits to the finest temper of which they are capable. What searchings of the heart, what analyzing of motives, what testings of the Word of God, what uplifting of soul...All these are associated with those weary days of waiting, which are, nevertheless, big with spiritual destiny"

I am so challenged, that as we move towards Christmas and all the business that comes with that time of the year, to ensure I allow myself those times of WAITING in His presence.

posted by Lynn at 09:48