Psalm 13
How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from
me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
Look on me and answer, Lord my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep
in death,
and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
I will sing the Lord’s praise,
for he has been good to me.
The DMV. The Doctor's Office. The Pizza Delivery Man. They all have one thing in common: waiting. We sit for hours on end in waiting rooms or wait with a persistent "h-anger" for our food to arrive in thirty minutes or less on a regular basis. We expect results, and in our world of "get it now" culture, waiting is simply the worst.
Don't want to wait for a movie to come out on
DVD? Pay extra money and have it available to download to you the second it
comes out online.
Don't want to stay on hold with Apple
Support? Type in your name and number on their website under the customer
service tab and someone will call you within 10 minutes when
a representative is available.
Don't want to call the pizza guy? Don't want
to type in your order online? Use an emoji to order your large pepperoni with
extra cheese. AN EMOJI!
Don't want to dig through your wallet for
your mastercard? Is counting cash too time consuming? Use your smartphone and
scan your credit card at participating stores directly from your phone.
When we are forced to wait for something, it pushes feelings of helplessness and ineffectiveness to the surface of our emotional boundaries where we constantly question whether or not the thing that we wait for is worth our precious time. I hate waiting. I avoid doctor's offices, DMVs, the bank, the mechanic, and long lines at all costs. Don't believe me? I'm sitting in Starbucks right now. I walked in and the line was all the way to the door. I sat down, opened my computer, worked on finishing something up for school, and ordered my drink from my phone. Seriously. Seven minutes later, as the guy that would have been in front of me stepped up to place his order I was telling the barista thank you with a smile on my face. (Is that cheating? I felt kind of bad...)
As I sat down again and sipped my venti non-fat double shot on ice with 3 shots of sugar free vanilla and 3 shots of sugar free caramel syrup instead of the usual 6 shots of classic syrup (Sorry barista for my complicated order) I overheard the conversation from the people sitting at the tables around me. At the long table in the corner, two women in pants suits talked into their bluetooth as one typed furiously on her laptop and another glanced over the piles of plans laid out on the table, tapping incessantly with her left hand while tapping her foot before rolling her eyes every few minutes and announcing that she was still on hold. At the table in front of me, a family of four and their grandmother sat on smartphones with pens and paper in hand jotting down information about local schools that could be found in whatever area they were moving to. The younger child was napping peacefully in the stroller, and the older girl was fidgeting in the seat playing with the straw that came with her now empty smoothie cup while her parents and grandmother argued over the actual definition of a Montessori School. To my right a middle aged man sat by himself at a table by the window, checking his watch every few minutes, loosening and tightening his tie, and checking his hair in the front facing camera on his phone. Just as I was taking a final sip of my complicated order, a woman waltzed in the door, ran her fingers through her hair before sitting down and leaning in to kiss the man's cheek. "I'm so sorry I'm late! I hope you haven't been waiting too long."
I've only been here for forty-five minutes.
As a country we're waiting for the next scandalous or controversial thing to come out of a politician's mouth. We're waiting on pins and needles as we watch social and racial tensions rise on a daily basis. We're anxiously waiting for the news blurb to come across our phone notifying us of the most recent terrorist attack or mass causality shooting. We're living in a world with such little hope, that we've forgot how to wait for the hope that's coming back to save us.
We've stopped waiting for Christ's return.
We've stopped looking around for the "God Moments" where He reveals himself and all we do is complain and question. All we do is curse and belittle the Almighty and roll our eyes and assume He's given up on our fallen world.
We don't live like people who are striving to prepare for Christ's arrival. We live like people who are trying to sweep life's messes under the rug in hopes of being able to ignore them until they start to overflow at the corners.
We don't wait patiently for anything anymore. We pray for peace and restoration for our world, and when it doesn't come immediately we betray our faith in God and accuse Him of not caring anymore. I was encouraged recently by Psalm 13 when David is pleading with God and asking Him why he feels so lonely. He's basically saying "You there, God? Hello? Why don't I feel you? Why can't I see you? Why aren't you evident in my life? How long are these feelings going to last? Am I going to feel lonely forever? Ok...fine. I trust you to work everything out, you're pretty cool God." He's honest with God, pleading with Him, questioning Him. But in the end of his prayer we see that David tells God that he trusts Him and will praise Him even when David doesn't feel like it.
We don't do that anymore as a nation. We pray for restoration, and then impatiently wait for immediate results. We skip the part where we say "You know what God? This is insane. Laws are being changed, people are being shot over disagreements, women and children are being abducted, people are being killed because of what they look like...but we trust that you're coming back, We're clinging to that hope."
That hope.
That hope that entered humbly into this world as a perfect human infant. That hope that lived perfectly so that we would not have to in order to enter into the kingdom. That hope that has kept the world in a working order generation after generation after generation. That hope that cares for the sparrows and knows the numbers of hair on the top of our head or that can hold the world's oceans in the palm of his hands.
That hope is Jesus, and sometimes it's helpful to remember that the battle has already been won. Christ is bigger than gun control regulations. Christ is bigger than ISIS. Christ is bigger than racial tension. Christ is bigger than 'lifestyle choice' controversies. Christ is bigger than all of those big things, and he's bigger than the small things that continue to go on in everyone's life while we watch the world deal with it's own issues. Christ is bigger than student loan debt. Christ is bigger than PRAXIS scores or scheduling issues. Christ is bigger than your difficult co-worker. Christ is bigger than all of the things that we fill our mind with by worrying.
So today, as you go throughout your routines and lives, stop being impatient. Stop questioning why and start trusting that even though it doesn't feel like it, God is sovereign and in control. Cling to that hope. Draw near to God and allow Him to draw near to you. Allow Him to use you to further His kingdom. Look for ways to be encouraging to those who are hurting. Look for ways to bless someone around you. Look for ways to serve and love and love and love.
Love is the only thing that's going to start sticking stuff back together again. Cling to hope that can only be found in love.
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