on waiting

My friend, Eddie shared a really good message during staff devotions this morning. He later sent us some writings to further our thinking on the subject of waiting. Here's sharing them with you all:
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Lamentations 3 (New International Version)

 ²⁴ I say to myself, "The LORD is my portion;
       therefore I will wait for him."

 ²⁵ The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him,
       to the one who seeks him;

 ²⁶ it is good to wait quietly
       for the salvation of the LORD.

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Those That Wait

I waited, waited for YHWH; And He inclined to me, and heard my cry. Psalm 40:2 (Hebrew Text)

Waited – Soon we will all have additional opportunities to wait.  Try seeing a doctor next year.  Of course, our cultural framework for waiting isn’t the same as waiting in David’s Hebrew view.  If we read our own temporal expectations into this verse (and others), we are likely to misunderstand what David says, and in the process, miss the blessing of waiting.

The Hebrew verb here is qawah.  Look at Job 3:9 or Micah 5:7 or Isaiah 59:11 or Lamentations 3:25.  Suddenly you realize that “waiting” is a very active process.  This is really a word about hope.  It is laced with dependence, ordered activities, trust in the Lord and eschatological perspectives.  We can wait – and wait – because we know that God’s will cannot be thwarted.  Qawah is anchored in sovereignty and rests on hesed.  God acts when we wait.

Don’t get confused about the order.  It is not reversed.  It is not “We act when God waits.”  There is a good reason why the very first action of Man after his creation on the sixth day was rest.  We wait first!  We might love Him because He first loved us, but when it comes to hope, our behavior precedes God’s.  We wait.

A bit of personal reflection will easily convince you that waiting is not a natural state of human behavior.  Try sitting at a stop light for more than five minutes.  Try standing in line at the check–out counter for ten minutes.  Try clicking on an Internet page and seeing the little rotating circle for more than 30 seconds.  Text messaging has destroyed the concept of “wait.”  From sex to success, wait is a four letter word.

But not in the Bible.  Waiting is a blessed behavior.  Waiting displays confident expectation.  Waiting is what I do when God is on the loose.  Look at the pictograph.  Qof-Vav-Hey is “what comes from securing what is behind.”  Ah, but you will say, “How can this help me have any idea about waiting.  I thought waiting was about hope.  Hope is about the future, not about what is behind me in the past.”  Yes, that’s certainly true – if you are Greek.  But if you are Hebrew, the future is “behind” you.  You are in the row boat, your back to the direction you wish to travel, looking at where you have already been.  You future is behind you.  Your hope is what you cannot see.  But your true line of travel comes from alignment with the past, what you can see, where you have already been.  If you want to wait on the Lord, you must keep rowing in alignment with His past actions.  Waiting is not floating.  It is rowing.  So, sit down and row.  Be active in your waiting.  Secure what lies behind you by putting your oars in the water in line with God’s wake.  Oh, yes.  And do it more than once.  “I waited, waited for YHWH.”

Taken from http://skipmoen.com/2010/03/25/those-that-wait/


(image from http://www.livingworld.net/works/wftw/)