WAIT

Cody and I have joked for a long time that, in his vocabulary, "Time" is a four letter word. He hates to hear. Hates to be told, "It's gonna take some time," or "We'll have to look for God's time on this one." By the same token, I've discovered in the last few years that "Wait" has a similar effect on me. Scripture is full of admonitions to "Wait on the Lord," but that "wait" part starts to make me a little crazy after a while. Most recently, I've been looking at those verses and praying, "but Lord, what am I waiting for?" with more than a little whine in my voice. A new year has always been prime journaling/blogging season for me. It seems I always have something to say and never more so than when there's a blank page in front of me like the start of a new year. However, 2007 rolled into town without much pomp or circumstance in my little world. I didn't have anything to say. I didn't know what to say. I was waiting. And, I wasn't waiting "patiently" like the Psalmist in Psalm 40. I wasn't waiting with good cheer like the Psalmist in Psalm 27 either. Finally, in desperation, I cried out again, "But, God, what in the world, am I waiting for?!" That's when the picture became clear. You know, those picture's He puts in my head to help me understand my position from time to time? In the picture, I am treading water (waiting) and I'm looking to various shores all around me, and each one represented one of the things I thought might be the key to getting "unstuck" from this waiting position. Graduation. New Job. Right Relationship. And the list goes on. I was positively frantic sitting in that water looking from one shore to the other and realizing that none of those things was capable of rescuing me. That's when it became clear to me. The Biblical phrase isn't "Wait." The Biblical phrase is "Wait on the Lord." It's so simple. So clear. I don't know why I missed it for so long. I think I must have known it at some point before, but I'd forgotten it more recently. In the picture, God wasn't on the shore around me, He was above me, and as I turned my attention toward Him, the words of Isaiah 26:3 came back to me so clearly, "You will keep in perfect peace Him whose mind is fixed on You." So, in 2007, I'm learning what it truly means to wait on the Lord, to let Him come to my rescue and be my All-Sufficient One.