The Gift of Waiting

I hate waiting. Oh I hate it so much. Patience has never been (and many days I fear never will be) my virtue. I have seriously contemplated whether God got me involved in teaching preschoolers just to bring my patience level up to the minimum standard required for daily life. Since life involves a lot of waiting, God has been very persistent with this patience theme. Patiently waiting. Bah humbug.

Apparently the Israelites felt that way too in Exodus 32. You remember the story: God brings the people of Israel out of Egypt, through the Red Sea on dry land, and leads them to Mt. Sinai, where the whole mountain explodes with fire and He speaks to them out of a cloud and they end up with the ten commandments. Seems fairly memorable. But then God calls Moses up the mountain to meet with Him. And the people wait. And wait. And wait. For over a month. So they get sick of waiting. They come to Aaron and he ( for some incomprehensible reason) makes them a golden calf and they worship it.

What really struck me as I read this other day though, was the way people worded their request to Aaron in verses 1-2 of that chapter. They ask Aaron to make them gods because "as for this fellow Moses we don't know what  has become of him." Isn't that interesting?  They're tired of waiting (we are SO bad at it- we humans. It's a wonder God puts  up with any of us). But notice this- they're not tired of waiting for God. God is not even mentioned- they've forgotten completely about God. They're tired of waiting for Moses. A couple of weeks of waiting and God is now completely off their radar screen. What does that say about who they've really been trusting through this whole thing? They haven't been trusting God. They've been trusting Moses.

Sadly, I can relate to the Israelites here quite a bit. When I started looking for ministry partners at the beginning of the summer, I was sure God would finish it all up in one summer and get me back to ministry there ASAP. I was even fairly sure how he was going to do it- churches and individuals that I thoroughly expected to jump on board. But instead, there's been waiting. Months and months of never ending, tear-filled, gut wrenching waiting. Once an entire month went by without a single person showing a speck of interest. And I was crushed. Absolutely devastated. Because my trust was in the wrong thing. It was in churches and people, and not in God. Only God can get this crazy thing done. Now, after all these months, I think I have at last figured out why waiting is so hard.

Waiting forces me to see that I am not in charge. If I was in charge, I wouldn't be waiting. Waiting shows me how I am trying to control things. Like a stubborn kids pushing rickety, rotten furniture up against a door to try to reach a handle, rather than waiting for his dad to open the door. Waiting is an opportunity to get off my rickety rotten pile of pride and kneel before the Good King who will open the door in His perfect time. Waiting is an opportunity, an invitation, to be with  Him.