Little Benjamin sat down to write a letter to God asking for a little baby sister. He started the letter out:
Dear God, I've been a very good boy....
He stopped, thinking, "No, God won't believe that." He wadded up the paper, threw it away, and started again:
Dear God, Most of the time I've been a good boy...He stopped in the middle of the line, again thinking, "God won't be moved by this," so into the trash can went the wad of paper.
Benjamin went into the bathroom, grabbed a big terrycloth towel off the bar, brought it into the living room and laid it on the couch. Then he went to the fireplace mantle, reached up and brought down a statue of the Madonna, the mother of Jesus, that he had eyed many times.
Benjamin placed the statue in the middle of the towel, gently folded over the edges, and placed a rubber band around the whole thing. He brought it to the table, took another piece of paper, and began writing his third letter to God:
Dear God, If you ever want to see your mother again....
Benjamin wanted God to act. He wanted Him to act NOW! We get like that sometimes.
Members of the early church got that way at times. They wanted Christ to come back for them. He said He would return and they wanted it to happen now. It was not easy being a Christian in a pagan world. Their one solace was that some day He would return and their faithfulness under fire would be vindicated. In the meantime all they could do was "wait," as St. Paul put it, "for the revealing of the Lord Jesus Christ." Sometimes that is all we can do as well.
Most of us do not like to wait. "When my father missed a plane," says Cavett Robert, the founder of the National Speakers Association, "he caught another one. When my grandfather missed a train, he caught one the next day. Their world did not come to an end. There were other trains and other planes. Today, we miss one section of a revolving door and our entire day is shot."
One sharp wit said, "I need to take a lesson in patience. Do you know where I can take a crash course?"
In a certain orchestral number by Joseph Haydn, the flute player is supposed to sit quietly for seventy-four measures and then come in exactly on the upbeat of the seventy-fifth. Gerald Johnson, historian and writer, plays the flute in the Baltimore symphony. He says that a composer who expects a man to wait that patiently and perform that precisely is looking for a rare individual.
IT TAKES HUMILITY TO WAIT.
And we can. To a point. There are some things, however, that can't be hurried. Recuperation from surgery, the grief process, a young person learning responsibility.
Shakespeare put it like this, "How poor are they that have no patience. What wound did ever heal but by degrees?"
John R. Claypool has wisely said, "Let's face it, there are two kinds of reality in this world of ours. There are the things you have to work for, and there are the things you have to wait for." Claypool is right. But we don't want to wait.
That prince of preachers, Phillips Brooks was pacing back and forth one day in a terrible fit of agitation. A friend asked him what was wrong. "I'm in a hurry," he said. "But God is not." It is one of the things all of us have to accept. We are not in control and God is in no hurry.
That takes humility to accept. Since humility is not one of our strengths, we work ourselves into a frenzy over things that only time can remedy.
We could all learn from
WINNIE THE POOH.
Benjamin Hoff has an interesting analysis of Milne's classic story for children. Compared to his friends, Pooh remains unfrazzled, down to earth, calm, and above all, patient. Owl constantly pontificates, showing off his wisdom, but never solves problems or makes things work. Rabbit is an impetuous activist, always calculating and clever, but always out of touch with reality.Eeyore, the donkey, frets and complains but never brings himself to action. Pooh, on the other hand, doesn't force things or try too hard, because he knows if he remains relaxed, sensible, and in touch with what's important, doing everything he can do in a situation, things will work out. Hoff concludes his book with the following advice: "Within each of us there is an Owl, a Rabbit, an Eeyore, and a Pooh. For too long, we have chosen the way of Owl and Rabbit. Now, like Eeyore, we complain about the results but that accomplishes nothing. If we are smart, we will choose the way of Pooh."
Hoff is right. Somebody needs to pry our fingers loose from the controls of our life.
Children are often more patient than grown-ups. Don Edwards, a newspaper columnist, writes of the little fellow standing at the bottom of a department-store escalator. Intently looking at the handrail, the small boy would not take his eyes away.
A salesperson asked, "Are you lost?" "Nope," came the reply, "I'm waiting for my chewing gum to come back."
The ability to wait is one of those child-like qualities that says, "Hey, there are some things in life I cannot control. But Someone is in control. It takes humility to wait.
IT ALSO TAKES FAITH TO WAIT.
Sometimes that is a faint hope to hold on to. Fatigue and desperation suggest: "throw in the towel"; "give up." How often we need to remember the words of the psalmist: "Delight thyself also in the Lord; and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in Him; and He shall bring it to pass." (37:4,5) The lives of three great Christian workers of the past demonstrates the validity of these words.
"The great colonial pastor Cotton Mather prayed for revival several hours each day for twenty years; the Great Awakening began the year he died. The British Empire finally abolished slavery as the Christian parliamentarian and abolitionist leader William Wilberforce lay on his deathbed, exhausted from his nearly 50-year campaign against the practice of human bondage.
Few were converted during Hudson Taylor's lifelong mission work in the Orient; but today millions of Chinese embrace the faith he so patiently planted and tended."
George MacDonald failed as a parish minister. Humiliated, he became a writer. For years he wrote with only modest success. But finally, his skill as a writer of fantasies, children's stories, and poetry won him acclaim. He became one of the best-known and most-loved English writers of his time.
It was one of MacDonald's books that gave C.S. Lewis his first nudge toward Christianity. Lewis said of him, "I know hardly any other writer who seems closer, or more continually close, to the Spirit of Christ himself."
MacDonald himself once said, "The principal part of faith is patience." It takes humility to wait. It takes faith to wait. There is something equally important that we need to see, however.
BY YIELDING CONTROL OF OUR LIVES AND TRUSTING GOD, WAITING CAN BE A CREATIVE STRATEGY FOR DEALING WITH LIFE'S DISAPPOINTMENTS.
The flower lady was smiling, her wrinkled face alive with joy. The pastor started down the stairs, then on an impulse turned and picked out a flower.
As he put it in his lapel, he said, "You look happy this morning."
"Why not? Everything is good." she answered.
She was dressed so shabbily and seemed so very old that her reply startled him. "No troubles?" he responded.
"You can't reach my age and not have troubles," she replied. "Only it's like Jesus and Good Friday." She paused for a moment.
"Yes?" prompted the pastor.
"Well, when Jesus was crucified on Good Friday, that was the worst day for the whole world. And when I get troubles, I remember that. And then I think what happened only three days later--Easter and our Lord arising. So when I get troubles, I've learned to wait three days--and somehow everything gets all right again."
And she smiled good-bye.
The old flower lady's advice would help many of us: "Give God a chance to help--wait three days."
"Wait on the Lord," wrote the psalmist, "be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart...."(27:14)
"...those that wait upon the Lord...shall inherit the earth." (37:9)
And who can forget the words of Isaiah: "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength....(40:31)
The word wait appears 106 time in the Scriptures. Sometimes there is nothing else we can do. Like the early church, we can only wait, watch, and work. Such waiting requires humility and faith simply to persevere. Sometimes, however, waiting can be a strategic response to a difficult situation. "Remember Jesus and Good Friday," said the old lady. "Give God a chance to help -wait three days."
St. Paul was writing to a church that was waiting for the revealing of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are still waiting today. We recognize there are some things in life we can't control, but we also believe there is Someone who can--and will.
