Looking at the future is like peering through a tiny hole.  We ‘wanna see tomorrow, but we can’t. Winston Churchill said “The message of dawn is hope.”

The 2019 calendar is on the fridge.  We plan. We scribble appointments and birthdays. Then we wait. We get that disturbing phone call or text.  We then scribble down the request we swore we would pray for.  Then we wait. We post our resume online. Then we wait. We sit still why a small piece of sun-cancered flesh is cut out to be biopsied. Then we wait.    

However, the recurring message we hear at the beginning of every new year is… “Get out there and make it happen!”  Exercise. Eat better. End bad habits. What’s wrong with that? Well, some things we cannot make happen, which begs the question… “Should we then take matters into our own hands?”

Life really is a like a slow train coming.  Sometimes, we do have to sit by the tracks and…wait.  We anticipate that answer to come, that relationship issue to resolve, that person to finally show up.  It has been said that if you want to be out of God’s will-then do something RASH.

Today, being HASTY is unfortunately the way of the world.  We get more than impatient when someone doesn’t respond to the question we sent via a text.  We receive an Amazon package in just two days. We have a sudden disagreement with our spouse and the enemy pops the divorce word quickly into our psyche.  Some folks hate their jobs and before they will give it some time they exit quicker than a cheetah chasing a gazelle. Our society declares, “Why wait?! If you don’t like your situation-change it…NOW!”  

From Ben Patterson’s Waiting, he admits, “I hate to wait.  My image of hell is an eternity of standing in line, waiting in the lobby of some Kafkaesque bureaucracy.  My teeth clench, my blood pressure rises, my field of vision narrows and my temper erupts.”

It’s like Paul knew our struggle when he wrote: “Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.  All I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.” (I Corinthians 13:12 NLT)

Thinking logically…so if it is true that God knows you completely, then He knows what you are tired of waiting for.  You know what to do. Give Him every detail of your situation from the most beautiful place: Your Knees. And yes, you will have to get on your knees many, many times.  God is more concerned with changing you or your spiritual transformation than providing some quick fix.

Paul offers more advice.  “We live by faith, not by sight”. (2 Corinthians 5:7 NIV) If you really want to follow God, then why not let Him lead you on the specific journey He has for “you” in 2019?

pictures courtesy of “Nelson & his Nikon”