Today, I am sitting in my new office, realizing I haven’t posted anything for a bit. It has been a busy time of waiting. Whoever said waiting was a passive, do nothing activity, missed something in the translation. Waiting is hard work. Waiting has a way of revealing all of your fears, anxieties, ambitions, tendencies and desires to take control and  just get going on something…anything.

The time of waiting can be your friend or your enemy depending on what you allow to take place during that time; what you embrace in the revelations.  The time of waiting can reveal your friends and your enemies. The former are those who encourage you and tell you to hang in there.  They are the ones who show grace as you work through all those fears, anxieties, etc., because they have been there…they know the struggle all too well and they know there is no putting a neat and tidy bow or a time limit on it.  They are not offended when you don’t walk it any better than they did.

The latter are those who urge you to give up, get moving on something else, think you are being passive in a lazy kind of way because you aren’t “pounding the pavement”, can’t wait for you to pull it together so that they don’t have to deal with you in your struggle.  In reality, they themselves don’t want to do the hard work of waiting that they have been drawn into through your experience.

Most of all, the waiting reveals whether or not you really believe you are loved by God, that his favour is upon you, that he delights in you as a father to a child, that he indeed has plans for you and that your life is not just another breath in the universe that has no distinction, uniqueness or special place in his heart.  That what you are waiting for is not about whether you have successes or failures in the process (there have been lots of both); it’s about his faithfulness and love and knowledge of the bigger picture that you can’t even begin to grasp.

Mmmm….

It is that belief that formed in me during the waiting.  It is that belief that kept me going when others stopped waiting with me.  It is that belief that I clung to when I wanted to give up and settle into a quiet, obscure life and just finish my days, having let the dreams go. After all, there is nothing wrong with living a quiet life, being faithful to the daily routines – unless that is not what God has called you to.

I wonder if Abraham had settled into the seeming reality that there would be no heir coming from him; his family line would end at him and that the stars he had stared at one night, and the voice he had heard, were just the product of his ambition and dreams.

I wonder if Jacob settled into never returning to the land of his father, away for so long and now with two wives and twelve sons, and that the angels he had seen ascending and descending were just an amazing dream that he had mistakenly believed was real.

I wonder if Joseph, somewhere along the way, reconciled himself to his slavery, seeing no way out, and lived to make the best of it and that his dreams of something big were just the outcomes of youthful arrogance and prideful embrace of favouritism.

I wonder if after 40 years, Moses had settled into life in the desert with his wife and two sons, perhaps occasionally haunted by the memories of a distant promise that he would be used to deliver a people.

I wonder if David convinced himself that he had misunderstood the words and anointing of Samuel, and settled into being a leader of men on the outside of the nation, thinking the throne had come and gone, because somewhere along the way, he had been found wanting and no longer suitable.

I wonder if Paul, in the quiet years between his initial interactions with the church as a new convert and the time Barnabas came searching for him, ever wondered what that Damascus road encounter had really been all about.

There is a saying today, “Don’t quit 5 minutes before the miracle happens.”

As I sit in my office, I am glad I didn’t give up.  I am glad that when I wanted to quit, God didn’t want to and that he sent encouragement to hang in through so many different ways that I might have missed had I not actually been looking for them, acting on the belief that he was indeed putting something together – I just needed to hang in “five more minutes”.

So now I am doing what I could never have imagined doing yet what brings together everything I have experienced in life and ministry – a gathering of the dispersion of activity and rather than negating any of it, taking it and putting it through the lens of God’s intent and creating a focused beam of light and life that has already begun to have positive, life-changing impact.

Five more minutes…

I am inspired to wait five more minutes in other areas too…

for the restoration of lost relationships

for the turning of hearts not yet clear on God’s presence and love

for that whisper that comes every now and then from a place beyond us all, yet so near and says,

“Thanks for waiting.  I love you.”