Can’t Wait

By Jane Thornton –

Mrs. Sneed was not to be interrupted during reading group. For any reason. So, when that first twinge hit my seven-year-old body, I knew I’d have to wait. I cocked an ear to her progress. They were just getting started.Tension built quickly. I squirmed. My impatient gaze jumped between the clock and Mrs. Sneed across the room—oblivious.

I rocked, but the discomfort grew. The blue reading group plodded through their story. Agonized, I debated my options.

No interruptions meant no interruptions. I bounced.

Horror overtook me when all my wiggling failed. Waiting was no longer an option. Sitting in a puddle of humiliation, with a frantic whisper, I sent a friend to make the forbidden disruption.

***

“I can’t wait for prom!”

Although my daughter is now a senior, and she has only a month to wait, I believe those words first came out of her mouth when she was a freshman. As a sophomore, she found her dress. (She wanted to borrow her older cousin’s. Free, so I was fine with that.) I’m pretty sure she started worrying about who her date would be halfway through her junior year. (Worked out that she’ll go with a friend. Again, fine by me.) Now, as the date approaches, final details heighten the anticipation—shoes, tux, limo, dinner reservations, ad nauseum (to me, not to her). Can the prom possibly live up to its hype?

***

We seem to spend a disproportionate amount of our lives waiting. Some hopeful, some miserable. I tend to forget that God has a purpose in both sorts.

When I’m as wretched as a squirming second grader in desperate need of a restroom, it’s difficult to open my eyes to God’s eternal perspective. I don’t want to make light of the emotional strain many endure in waiting for things like diagnoses, resolution of conflict, or the return of a rebellious child. However, sometimes these issues do make us feel like we’ll burst, and we cry out our whys to God.

At times I find comfort in Isaiah and Jeremiah:

“‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the LORD. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.’” Isaiah 55:8-9 (NIV)

“‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.  Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.’” Jeremiah 29:11-13 (NIV)

It helps to know He has a purpose for me even if I can’t see it. But I also cling to his assurance that I can see it:

“However, as it is written:
‘No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for those who love him,’ but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us…‘For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?’  But we have the mind of Christ.” I Corinthians 2:9-12,16 (NIV)

This promise elicits the prom-style of waiting. All our lives we anticipate the next step:  driver’s license, college, marriage, kids, retirement, not to mention Christmases, birthdays, the big game, and the like. We treasure these waiting times, relishing each step toward the goal.

Let’s remember that each bit of eagerness is a shadow, a reflection, a foretaste, and even part of the expectation of our ultimate end. Not only will the miserable waiting end, but the anticipatory waiting will be fulfilled – and we will not be disappointed. Paul describes God as “able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine.” Ephesians 3:20 (NIV)

I can imagine a lot!