By Ally Glover
As we wait, we anticipate what is to come. That is, we anticipate what is not yet. We long for what is beyond what we see now, the hope for an outcome, we await a response or a solution to settle our lives. Perhaps the majority of life is spent in this state - is it not? Must we always be waiting?
And as we wait, who shall we become? what will this waiting do within us? Will we become embittered, untrusting and cynical? Or rather, could the waiting be an invitation to draw us into deeper delight?
C.S. Lewis in one of this early writings, the problem of pain, speaks of the goodness of God. He writes that if we merely see the goodness of God through the lens of his kindness, then essentially we are missing out on the depth of His care; It is shortsighted. Maybe this seems far off from the topic of waiting. But- let’s look deeper here. Do we equate the times of waiting with His kindness and His closeness? Or rather, do we feel that the Father is far off, possibly abandoned us altogether as we wait? The unclarity may feel like silence.
Could it be that the waiting, the longing, the not-knowing, and the unresolved - that it is all a way the Father (in His goodness), uses the peripheral things and the most unclear as often the greatest opportunity for formation. For it is in mystery we discover once again that we are more weak than we ever imagined and we are far more desperate for His vision for our lives. He desires our inward being formed into His likeness, our desires reoriented, our hopes pulled back into delight in a Father who doesn’t see as we see and do as we do. No, it is for our good that this is true.
Surely His goodness is not shallow, not kept boxed up in our own perception of kindness or goodness (and often clarity for our lives). But perhaps, it is here where we learn to see Him as altogether kind and we surrender our waiting to His careful, loving hand.
Habakkuk 2:3 / “For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay”.
Isaiah 30:18 / “Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him”.
And so, as we wait - is it here that we discover what or whom we are waiting on? And we find Him here with us again and again. It is a person we need - not a solution.
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