Wait.
Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures through all generations. The Lord is faithful to all his promises and loving toward all he has made. The Lord upholds all those who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down. The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food at the proper time. You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing.
Psalm 145:13-16
I hate to wait. I hate to wait in line, I hate to wait on the phone. When I was young, I hated to wait for Christmas morning. I knew there was really good stuff under the tree and I didn’t want to wait for it. I wanted it now. I am 48 years old and I still hate to wait. When I call someone, I want them to answer — if they don’t answer, I want them to call me back soon. If there are more than two people ahead of me in line at the grocery store, I dash over to the self-check line and probably take three times as long to look up the little number code for ginger root — all because I hate to wait. My beautiful Macintosh G5 tower has dual processors and 2.5 GB of RAM, but when it takes more than 15 seconds to open a 90MB Photoshop file, I get impatient.
So as we are nearing the end of January with no job offer, I grow tired of waiting. I had hoped that we would have an offer by mid-December, and that Jim would begin his new job by the beginning of 2007. Then Elizabeth could go back to college to begin the spring semester, Sara Ann would know where she will finish high school and we could all start the new year with things settled.
But look at verse 15 in the Psalm: the proper time. It does not say by January 1, 2007. It does not say, whenever you feel that the time is right. It especially does not say, when you get tired of waiting and begin to lose patience.
No — it says, “The Lord upholds all those who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down. The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food at the proper time. You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing.”
That really hit me between the eyes tonight. We were talking at the dinner table about how — even though we have peace about the job, we have faith, we know that God is in control and that He has it figured out, we are tired of waiting! Like Christmas morning, I know that what He has in store for us will be exciting, but I want to open it now.
I get so frustrated with my kids when they get hungry while I’m making dinner and they start raiding the pantry. As i work to prepare good, healthy, satisfying food that will nourish their bodies, they grab junk food to snack on in their impatience to wait. I have thought about the meal we will share at our table, I have carefully selected it especially for them, tailored it to their individual tastes; yet they settle for the crap in the pantry rather than wait for what I have prepared for them.
So I think now that my prayer will be that I will have patience to wait for the goodness He is at work preparing for us right now. Not to take matters into my own hands and settle for junk, but to wait for the real blessings that await me at His table.