Waiting
I have a question that I hope some one here can help me understand the answer.
I freely admit that I don’t understand Marketing. I know nothing about being a major retailer and absolutely zip about making products.
On Thanksgiving night I was @ my aunt in law’s home. Watching re-runs of one of the shows I like and I kept seeing a commercial…over and over. Ok there were several of them that were awfully repetitive.
However the was one that just blew my mind.
It was for the PS3 – Game system. That is the high dollar electronic gadget for this Christmas gift season. It went on sale just last week and I watched news reports that interviewed people that waited in line for 5 days to get into Best Buys or Circuit City to buy the system…..
The system is sold out everywhere. ( If you insist on purchasing one you can find them starting for $1000 on E-bay. )
My point is,…..If they are sold out then why spend millions of dollars advertising during the Peak commercial season.
I just don’t get it. ( And my kids won’t get it for a long time either. )
It just floors me that the company that makes them is working so hard to keep the frenzy and desire so high - when they can’t supply satisfaction.
They expect people to be willing just to wait.
Today we have as our scripture a psalm that opens with the statement:
I waited patiently for the LORD; he turned to me and heard my cry.
Wait and patiently in the same sentence seems a little odd to me. I guess because I am not that patient. I like to claim that I am but, I know it is not true.
The author is looking back on a life situation, that is past and perhaps they were not as patient as we might think. They claim patients but, they also mention that they were not silent…they cried out to God.
Often the patients we demonstrate has less to do with us and our ability to wait and more to do with the situation.
Like when we were children and had no choice except to wait for Christmas. We could moan and groan all we wanted too it would not bring Christmas any faster.
Advertisers play on our “patience” weakness all year round. They tell us how to smell, and look, what to drive and where to live. They play on our tendency to make every thing in life about having it now. Centering the process on us because we worked for it or deserve it some how.
There are patient people in this world. They don’t get aggravated in traffic at the lights that stay red for ever when no one else is coming. However, I am afraid that they are a dyeing breed, and if it is a learned trait taught by parents or school then it will soon be a lost art. We live in a give it to me now, fast food, and get there quick kind of world. Not many of us want to waste our time waiting.
In fact many of us would rather do without than wait in a line.
However, all through scripture we find people waiting for God to do things. Abraham and Sarah wait 25 years for the promised child. Not that they were patient. They tried to solve their needs and wants in their own way.
Or how about the Israelites wondering in the desert for 40 years before entering into the Promised Land. That was an act of patience right? Perhaps not….
When we look at scripture we might start to think that waiting might be a spiritual discipline. God called the people of the past and us to be waiting people.
Are we waiting just to wait? Is it simply a control thing like when we make out pets do a trick for a special treat?
The psalmist seems to have learned something about patiently waiting. His tone does not contain frustration or anger or sadness. It sounds like a hopeful reminder.
Perhaps, we can learn something from their experience or maybe we can find new meaning in our personal experiences.
The psalmist has learned that when he waited patiently he let God work.
When he waited patiently God came to him and heard is cry.
And ultimately, God responded in tangible ways.
In the writer’s situation he describes what God did, He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.
Now, I suppose that the author could be talking about a real slimy pit or quick sand but, I believe that we are looking at a metaphor here.
This is a psalm, a song for worship used in temple worship. It is like any hymn that we might sing from the hymnal like “It is well with my soul” or Amazing Grace that help us to speak the emotional elements of our life situations.
The pain, the joy of life situations brought out in worship with verbal images.
I believe that the author is using this vivid description to explain that he was in a mess that he could not escape and was helpless.
God responded and got him to firm ground.
By waiting, the psalmist explains that by “patiently” waiting, God could work instead of struggling and making it worse.
The idea here is that God is working on his timetable, His plan and His schedule.
The situations of life we experience can cause us stress and impatience and all-to-often we try to rush a resolution instead of crying to God and allowing him to help us to properly get a footing.
Phillips Brooks, a pastor in Boston in the late 1800’s, when asked one day, the reason for his agitation said, "The trouble is I’m in a hurry, but God isn’t."
Can any of you identify with that feeling? I know I can.
Have any of you heard about the Chinese bamboo tree?
The Chinese plant the seed; they water and fertilize it, but the first year nothing happens. The second year they water and fertilize it, and nothing happens.
The third and fourth year they water and fertilize it, and nothing happens.
Then the fifth year they water and fertilize it,, in a period of approximately six weeks, the Chinese bamboo trees grow roughly ninety feet.
The question is, Did it grow ninety feet in six weeks or did it grow ninety feet in five years?
The obvious answer is that it grew ninety feet in five years, because had they not applied the water and the fertilizer each year, or if they gave up and planted something else, there would have been no Chinese bamboo tree.
Some things in this life take time for us to notice that God is responding. If we are impatient we will all too often give up when things seem to not be happening.
It all comes down to God’s timing.
Wouldn’t it be nice if he gave us a nice calendar of his plan so that we would not mess things up? I know it would help me and I am not alone.
Why is it that some of us just can’t wait patiently for God to work in our lives, home, church, school or work?
Could it be we don’t trust God and we don’t think He is working the way we want Him to work?
There was a story about a farmer and his wife. The wife was a jump too it and get it done now person and the husband was a slow and deliberate, measure twice cut once kind of person.
One night they were awakened by a commotion in the chicken house. The wife sprang out of bed, ran to the chicken house and found the cause of the racket, a large black snake.
Having nothing to dispatch it with, she clamped her bare foot on its head.
There she stood, until her husband finally arrived, a good fifteen minutes later. He was fully dressed and even his pocket watch was in place.
"Well," he said cheerfully to his disheveled and enraged wife, "If I’d known you had him, I wouldn’t have hurried so."
Some of us are in such a hurry to get answers for our problems and concerns that we are not willing or interested in waiting on God to work in our situation.
The Psalmist knew that waiting patiently let’s God work.
Maybe a better way to say it is that it lets us see or notice God working on our slimy, and sinking situations.
If we ever notice that God is working, the psalmist tells us that God will give us a new song. The next line in psalm 40 is, “He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the LORD.
Waiting patiently allows God to put a new song into our mouths. When we notice God doing things in our lives perhaps for us or people we know it changes our perspective.
How do we act when we first fall in love…Mushy, semimetal, don’t we hum little love songs.
When someone is in love, don’t others notice the change in the person?
Often we are not very kind to their bubbling and happiness but we notice.
It is exactly the same when someone notices God moving in their life. They feel joy and excitement and show happiness.
The psalmist brought the emotions of God moving into a song that people could share.
If we are rushing here and there and we never allow time to witness God working then we will never be changed by witnessing God working in our lives.
We will be to busy and stressed to notice that the creator of the universe has an interest in us and our situation. We will never have time for a new song.
I believe that patience is really just another way of saying – Trusting in God. I believe that it is a learned skill that comes from a living relationship with God…
I am not just talking about head knowledge. I believe that patients is heart knowledge. Once a person learns to wait then you can sing in the midst of whatever comes your way because you know there is more to come to you.
The Psalmist knew that anyone could wait but it takes a godly man or woman to wait and sing a new song.
An auto mechanic received a repair order that said to check a clunking noise when going around corners. So he took the car out for a test drive and made two right turns and each time -sure enough -he heard a clunking noise. Back at the shop, he returned the car to the service manager with this note: "Removed bowling ball from trunk."
Some things are fairly obvious. Some things do not stand out as clearly.
Christian author Eileen Guder has written; "To be impatient with God, chronically, habitually impatient with Him because things are not to our liking, makes the Christian life a dreadful burden."
Our culture teaches us that waiting is wasteful.
That busyness is good.
That we control everything about our lives
That there are time limits and expectations in which everything must be completed or fixed or thrown away.
It teaches us that if we wait, we are somehow being abused.
But the psalmist reminds us that to wait on God offers us something unique and new.
The unique thing is that God cares for his creation including imperfect, needy creatures that tend to think everything in the universe centers on themselves.
Creatures that want stuff and when they look at their cars, and homes and vacations it is like when all the gifts under the Christmas tree have been opened and the kids say is this all?
God says no, Remember that I am always with you, to help you out of your troubles, to steady you when you are weak, to guide you when you are lost.
The new thing is that with the realization of God’s interest the joy of the relationship becomes so real and alive it is obvious to others that something new has come into your life.
When they look and see nothing new on the outside they may ask what has happened to you?
