08/26/2022
Modern day people who live in small towns and villages often leave them to make new homes in the larger cities; they find the allure of high paying jobs, the vibrance of city life, and all the activities that are immediately available to them there to be exciting and enticing, but the greatest draw is in the fact that they can have all these things “right now”. People of faith are often drawn to the worldly life for all the same reasons… we have become a “right now” society, and waiting on anything, even God, has become unacceptable to modern man. Waiting on God is like watching paint dry to many in today’s world, and yet waiting is certain, peaceful, and can calm us if we will trust in the Lord.
“I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry.”
Psalm 40:1 ESV
When I was a boy my world was divided into two distinct cultures, there were the city people, and the country folks. When I left the modern life I lived every day as a military child and stepped into the country life on my grandfather’s farm, it was like moving into a different world altogether. Time slowed down, in this world taking a bath in a washtub filled with water heated on the stove was normal, leaning up against the house on cane-bottomed chairs and talking into the night was relaxing and made it easier to fall asleep at night, milking the cow each morning and churning your own butter seemed better than wasting your money on the store bought variety, gathering eggs in the and frying them in the grease left behind from sausage made each year when the hogs were slaughtered, or from the bacon and ham brought in from the smokehouse tasted wonderful, just like the homemade biscuits filled with carefully canned preserves… life was slower, speech, and faith had a steady, and certain, way about them too. Waiting on God, although still hard at times, was not counter to one’s culture. The crops could not be hurried, apples were only harvested once a year, the milk cow grazed peacefully in the pasture, and almost every aspect of life had a set pace to it that required patience. In all of this there was God, and Jesus Christ who were not any different; they walked with you to the fields and church; they led you through the hard places, brought an end to droughts before they could destroy you, and spoke in slow quiet voices about living righteous lives that were founded on principles of faith that hadn’t changed for as far back as anyone could remember. Faith was the metronome by which life was lived, praise was sung, and prayers were lifted up each day.
“The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”
2 Peter 3:9 ESV
Patience is a virtue they say, but it also seems to be a rare commodity these days. Our lives have become frantic, even the weather forecast is delivered by telling us how today varies from the “average”, but without the understanding that it doesn’t rain every day, or that seasonal floods have always come in their time. We hear the dire warnings but not the consolation that storms are part of life too, and that all of these things are stirred together to form the “average” that people want so desperately to live each day. God is not in the “average”, He is in the storms of life, the gentle rains, the raging floods, and the bright sunny days that can parch our crops. God, and Jesus Christ are in all of life… in every aspect of it, and for us to understand this we are often required to wait, and have patience. Sometimes our prayers are answered quickly, while at other times we wait on the answers for years. Faith runs the full gamut of life, and although we can calculate an “average” if we like, there is rarely an “average” day in God’s plan, or in our walk with Jesus. Are we ready to wait on the Lord, and leave behind our quest for the “average”? Are we ready to live out each new day of faith while the arm of our faith’s metronome swings back and forth from one side to the other?
“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.””
Lamentations 3:22-24 ESV
Prayer:
Father, thank you for each new day, and the variety you tell us we will find in our lives. Thank you for the prayers you answer quickly, and those that require us to patiently wait on you. Thank you for the good things you provide that we praise you for, and for the hard things in life that increase our dependence on you, strengthen our faith in Jesus, and bring us closer to you. Holy, Holy, Holy, are you our God who takes all of life, and uses it to perfect us. Praised be your name for every storm that comes, every drought that bakes the land, and for your deliverance that sees us through each and every moment of our day. Merciful are you Father for keeping us in your arms, and for teaching us how to wait upon you. Your grace abounds, and your loving kindness never abandons us. We pray for the second coming of your Son, and ask that you teach us to wait patiently for that day. Wash us in His blood Father, and free us of sin and death through Him. Make us righteous, holy, and pleasing to you. Call us worthy in Christ on our day of judgement, and seat us before you in peace and joy forevermore.
Rich Forbes