The Weight of Waiting

There is nothing like waiting for God’s plan to play out to test your patience and expose the contents of your heart. For years I have daily prayed these words of King David:

Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Try me and know my anxious thoughts;
And see if there be any hurtful way in me,
And lead me in the everlasting way.
(Psalms 139:23-24, NASB)

Recently, He has been answering that prayer through a series of tests—most of which involve delays in His provision of housing and job security, since my husband and I followed His direction in moving back to Kansas during the worst drought and heat wave since the Dust Bowl.

Not long after we moved, the Lord allowed me to get a temp job working at a different store within the same company I had worked for the past 18 months. I figured in no time He would let us find a good home to rent, as well. But it was not so. As the weeks turned into months, I have grown more and more anxious and impatient to find a place, so I can get into a comfortable and predictable routine. I have also seen some facets of my character I am not very proud of.

Ghost-writing the memoirs of a Rwandan Genocide survivor, Theo Macombe, and losing my 91-year-old non-Christian grandfather to lung cancer have impressed upon me how precious little time we may have to influence the world around us for Christ. One never knows how much is left of his/her lifespan, or whether catastrophic events or the return of Christ may cut it short.

So if my tweets, blogs and commentary sound unusually urgent, it’s because I have the weight of all I am learning during this waiting season pressing down on my heart. I know there is still so much I am called to do, but I feel my time to accomplish it all is slipping rapidly away. As the Gaithers remind us in the chorus of their song, “We Have This Moment Today,” we must never forget the truth…

We have this moment to hold in our hands
and to touch as it slips through our fingers like sand;
Yesterday’s gone and tomorrow may never come,
But we have this moment today.

May you also sense this urgency and keep the calling and purposes of God at the forefront of your mind and heart. May our awareness of the eternal shape every word, deed and priority of the here-and-now.