And I know my voice echos with billions of others. No one enjoys the delay of gratification.
Yes.
I KNOW.
It's good for me.
The List of Bad Things that are Good For Me:
- Running, daily (HAHAHAHAHA!!!)
- Running, sporadically
- Washing aged dirty dishes
- Organic Chemistry
- Waking up before 7 am (which coincidentally has been part of Organic Chemistry)
- Composting
- Cleaning the apartment shower
- Skipping the coffee
- Setting and emptying the fruit fly traps
- Rough drafts
- Folding laundry
- WAITING
The wedding is T-minus six months as of Wednesday, but I've recently come up with a plan (read: coping mechanism) to somehow prove to myself that it's not actually as long as I think: I'll count how much time I still have to wait, and then count back that same amount of time and try to remember what I was doing. Six months ago I was on J-Term break, walking through two feet of snow in Massachusetts and soaking in the heat of the Wagners' wood-burning stove. Today, I'm nearly immune to sunburn, and the ice melts in my water bottle before I can take a swig.
...So much for that plan.
Any time is a long time when you are waiting.
When I was younger, my mom used to sing The Patience Song to me if I complained about waiting. It went something like this:
Have patience, have patience
don't be in such a hurry.
Have patience, have patience,
you'll only start to worry.
Remember, remember,
that God is patient too.
And think of all the times when others
had to wait for you.
The song certainly served its purpose: I was careful not to voice complaints in her presence. But it never solved the problem. At the end of the song, I was still waiting.
Counting the Years
In the Old Testament, when you wait for freedom, you wait seven years.
When you wait for love, you wait fourteen years.
When you wait for rescue, you wait forty.
When you wait to return, you wait seventy.
SEVENTY!!!
Maybe God is the only one who likes waiting...
Exit 59 Church is currently teaching through Exodus, and today we talked about Moses' life after he fled from Egypt. He lived in the desert for 40 years, and he was 80 years old when God called him. Add that to the next 40 years he spent in the desert with a new crowd...
He lived in the desert for 80 years... dang.
And the whole time, the Hebrew people continued to be slaves in Egypt, as they had been for years and years and years before.
Why was God waiting to free the oppressed?
Why was God waiting?
And yet we are instructed to "Be strong, and take heart, and wait for the Lord." -Psalm 27
God has some kind of timing I don't understand. He simply asks me to wait. The word for "wait" in Spanish also translates as "hope." Maybe the art of waiting is something like this: the act of patiently looking forward to God's will, which is "good and pleasing and perfect" while continuing to follow, grow, seek, and lift Him higher.
I hope I can making waiting look that graceful. ;)
...So much for that plan.
Any time is a long time when you are waiting.
When I was younger, my mom used to sing The Patience Song to me if I complained about waiting. It went something like this:
Have patience, have patience
don't be in such a hurry.
Have patience, have patience,
you'll only start to worry.
Remember, remember,
that God is patient too.
And think of all the times when others
had to wait for you.
The song certainly served its purpose: I was careful not to voice complaints in her presence. But it never solved the problem. At the end of the song, I was still waiting.
Counting the Years
In the Old Testament, when you wait for freedom, you wait seven years.
When you wait for love, you wait fourteen years.
When you wait for rescue, you wait forty.
When you wait to return, you wait seventy.
SEVENTY!!!
Maybe God is the only one who likes waiting...
Exit 59 Church is currently teaching through Exodus, and today we talked about Moses' life after he fled from Egypt. He lived in the desert for 40 years, and he was 80 years old when God called him. Add that to the next 40 years he spent in the desert with a new crowd...
He lived in the desert for 80 years... dang.
And the whole time, the Hebrew people continued to be slaves in Egypt, as they had been for years and years and years before.
Why was God waiting to free the oppressed?
Why was God waiting?
And yet we are instructed to "Be strong, and take heart, and wait for the Lord." -Psalm 27
God has some kind of timing I don't understand. He simply asks me to wait. The word for "wait" in Spanish also translates as "hope." Maybe the art of waiting is something like this: the act of patiently looking forward to God's will, which is "good and pleasing and perfect" while continuing to follow, grow, seek, and lift Him higher.
I hope I can making waiting look that graceful. ;)
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