Question: What are We Waiting For?

Once I was babysitting several children and told them they just needed to wait a little bit longer before we could go outside and play. Of course, this response was agonizing to them, as their little hearts were set on it. One girl, a 6-year-old, kept asking me every few minutes if it was time yet. Ugh, not yet. Joking around, I said, “Let’s make up a ‘waiting’ song!” Without missing a beat, she sang, “I hate, hate, hate to wait!!!”

Wow, a girl after my own heart.

Last week, I wrote about different forms of poverty. Here is an area in which I acknowledge my own: I LACK patience. Sure, I can usually stand in a line for a fair amount of time, I can endure it when someone postpones an appointment or phone call that was important to me, and I am typically relatively quiet about my frustrations and discontents when things are not going my way. But most of that can be attributed to personality characteristics and not virtue. When it comes down to it, I am squirming all over on the inside and wishing – sometimes subtly trying – to deliver myself from the discomfort of having to wait.

I hate, hate, hate to wait.

I sympathize with that little girl. It is so hard to have your heart set on something, even to hear it promised to you and to know it is coming, but to hear those words: “Not yet.”

Often, the Lord reveals something of His plan for me – for healing or marriage or mission work, etc. - and I get excited and say, “I’ll take it from here!” and I start planning the next three steps….. Just the other day, I was exciting to talk to a friend about foreign mission opportunities and so I asked him to call me so we could chat.  As I was leaving, he said, “Keep praying!” My heart sank just a little bit. I could just hear God saying, “Lindsay, relax. You don’t have the whole picture yet. Wait.”

But, Lord, you know I don’t like that word….

It is hardest for me to wait when I don’t understand. When it seems to me there is an easy solution to a problem and it is not being resolved as I wish it would be. When I or someone I love is in pain or in a bad situation and I am powerless to help. When I long to go somewhere or do something, and the door is just not open. Waiting takes humility and trust, because it requires me to admit that I am not in control and to believe that God has my best interests at heart.

When Jesus was 12 years old, He wandered away from His parents on their way home from Jerusalem. Scripture says that “after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions” (Luke 2:46). I can only imagine this scene of Jesus as a boy. Though He was God, He was also man, so He probably came to discover His own vocational call just as many of us do. Perhaps one of the Rabbis put his arm around Jesus’ shoulder and gave Him a very fatherly tour of the Temple, taking great care to explain everything present there, and helping to stir in the Heart of the Incarnate Word Himself a desire to one day stand before everyone and read from the scrolls…. And was not his heart burning within Him? J

Then Mary and Joseph finally find the boy and insist that He come home right this instant! Jesus knows in a much deeper way now that His Father is here (Lk. 2:49), His mission is broader than a life of carpentry work in Nazareth. Yet, what does He do? He returns with His parents to Nazareth, and for 18 more years carries on His life there. 18 years! What a long time to wait! 18 years of waiting for 3 years of public ministry. Jesus heard the call. No doubt He knew His identity. He could have begun His ministry at age 21. Or 25. How much more good He could have done!

Or.... how much good He could have failed to do.

For those 18 years, He was growing in intimacy with God the Father. He was growing in His identity and in His gifts and in His call. And for those 18 years, the Father was preparing the hearts of all those Jesus would minister to, so they would be able to receive His words. Had Jesus stepped out earlier, on His own initiative, the grace would not have been there, the fruits would not have been ripe, and so many conversions and healings would not have happened.

It is the Father Who ordains the perfect time for the carrying out of His will, and He knows what is best. I need the humility and trust to allow Him to work. And God knows that I have nothing good unless He gives it to me, so I ask for what I lack: God, grant me patience, and please hurry!


“Simply by making us wait, God increases our desire, which in turn enlarges the capacity of our soul, making it able to receive what is to be given to us.” - St. Augustine -