The Waiting Is The Hardest Part

There is nothing easy about waiting. Nothing.

I don’t think waiting ever gets easier either. Ever.

Growing up the worst time to learn about waiting was Christmas time. My dad would walk through the house and warn us that our eyes were going to pop out because were going to be SO surprised on Christmas morning. Then he would quarantine the garage and prohibited us from going in there, because that’s where the surprise was and we didn’t want to ruin it.

This only made the waiting more difficult, because not only was the anticipation built up but now we knew where our eye popping material was located. And the closer we got to December 25th, the harder the waiting became. On Christmas Eve, he’d spend all night in that garage tinkering, hammering, rearranging, shouting “WOW” every so often, all the while knowing that we’d hear every word and every movement.

The image that sticks out in my mind is me staring at the garage door from the dark hallway, and all I can see is the light squeaking in from both sides of the door. Every my dad’s shadow would cross, and there would be movement, but I was still waiting. Like all kids I’d try and stay awake to get a sneak peak at the surprise, only to fall asleep waiting, and carried off into bed by one of my parents.

But the waiting then never got easy. And the waiting now, still isn’t easy.

It’s easy to say, “wait on the Lord” with a smile on your face and a skip in your step when you’ve just started waiting. It’s another thing entirely to say “wait on the Lord” when you’ve been waiting for months, years, or decades. When you’re exhausted and beaten down, waiting another day seems like waiting another 5 years.

Those who’ve waited a long time can recite the passages in their sleep about ‘rising up on the wings of Eagles’, or ‘finding renewed strength’, in their sleep because that’s what their dreaming about, but somewhere along the way the waiting game has taken the hopeful aspirations and jaded them.

For me, one of the hard parts about waiting is knowing that God is up to something, and I have to wait for it. Like my dad in the garage, I know something is happening but I can’t see it yet.

Like Abraham, who was promised a child when he was 75. Only to have waited for 24 years before Isaac was born. That’s 24 years of waiting, and now he’s 99. There isn’t anything easy about that.

Or Moses, who was wandering the desert for 40 years before seeing the burning bush. Only to wander it for 40 more years with a nation following him. The whole while waiting for the promise land for 80 years.

Saul offered the sacrifice before Samuel had come. He was told to wait for Samuel, but the Philistines were coming, his army was scattering, Samuel was late, and a sacrifice needed to be offered before Israel could begin their defense. So he acted.

I don’t know many who wouldn’t have done the same.

The disciples saw Jesus’ risen body, they were ready to begin working on what they thought the kingdom would look like, only to be told to wait, and not do anything until the Spirit came.

Did they? Yes and No. Did they return to Jerusalem, yes. Did they gather and pray, yes. But they did other things before the Spirit came…

I don’t think that waiting was easy for these people, so why should it be easy for us? The question we need to be asking is how do we wait well? What lessons do we learn while we wait? And what are we learning about God through these times of waiting?

I’ve found that the other hard part about waiting, is not knowing how long you’ll be waiting for. It may be years, days, hours, or mere moments, but waiting no matter how long or short, it isn’t easy.

It’s ironic that the word wait can also be translated hope in some Old Testament passages. Because waiting for a long period of time seems to erase any trace of hope. Yet our waiting needs to be pregnant with the hope that God will not have us waiting for something in vain.

I can only hope that what God has me waiting for will be great. So great that my eyes are gonna pop out of my head.

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~ by Brad on September 9, 2011.