Waiting

my-fifth-birthdayWait for the Lord; be of good courage and he shall strengthen your heart, wait I say on the Lord!
Psalm 27:14

One of my Christmas traditions is making peanut brittle. Nothing like butter and sugar right? This evening I am making a batch and once again I forget what a SLOW process it is.
All the ingredients must simmer until the candy thermometer reaches 280 degrees; then I add the peanuts and continue to simmer until it reaches the hard crack stage. Sounds simple enough right?

Every year its the same routine with me. The directions say it will take 90 minutes to get to that 280 degree part; during which I am constantly checking and thinking, ” man, this is slow.” Or sometimes, “maybe my thermometer is not working properly,” or sometimes my impatience gets the best of me and I against my better judgment think “maybe if I turn up the heat it will hurry things along.” (or scorch!! Duh!)

What’s up with that?
We spend most of our life doing some form of waiting:

Waiting in line for one reason or another.
Waiting on hold.
Waiting to grow up, to graduate, to get married, to have children.
Waiting to get a job.
Waiting to pay off debt.
Waiting to get in shape, to lose weight, to get well again.
Waiting, waiting, waiting.

What is it about waiting that makes it hard?

Waiting requires some sort of faith and trust in sometimes in things seen and sometimes in things unseen.
Waiting requires patience and perseverance.
Waiting requires us to trust in something or someone besides ourselves.
Waiting means we cannot always control the outcome of a particular situation, we must wait and see so to speak.

Perhaps the waiting is this journey called life.
Perhaps it is what we do while we wait that matters.
Perhaps it is whose Hand we put our hand into and choose to walk with while waiting that matters most.

You see God created us in HIS image. We have the DNA of the Creator of the universe and we were created to long for relationship with Him. While we wait we may:

Develop faith in His Presence in our lonely dark nights of the soul
Develop trust in His sovereignty – His being Supreme
We may grow more patient of others failings and look less at our own
We may begin to do right for rights sake.
We may become less self absorbed
We may become less prone to forcing our own solutions that usually don’t help things along (turning up the heat, scorching the candy. Think of Sarah and Abraham while they waited for God’s promise of a baby to come. Sarah thought she would help God’s plan along and use her servant to bring an heir. We know how that turned out. )
We may suffer as we wait, which develops perseverance, which develops character and character develops hope (Romans 5:3,4)
We come to understand there are many things over which we are powerless, but God is not.

At the end of the day it is the reunion with Him that we long for and wait for and it is what we do that moves us toward Him while we wait that matters most.

During Advent we are we reminded that we wait on the Lord’s coming.

In life we wait to realize God is in us and with us and for us.

Wait for the Lord.
Be of good courage and He shall strengthen your heart.
Wait, I say, on the Lord.

It’s time to add the peanuts to the peanut brittle.