ThroughSample

Most of us aren’t good at waiting. As we approach the pay booths on a toll road, we’ll be trying to second-guess the best queue to join, to get through as quickly as possible. What is it that makes the blood boil when we end up stuck behind a person who insists on paying the toll with a handful of coins? Being caught in rush-hour traffic, or standing in a queue at the bank or supermarket, or just waiting for the kettle to boil . . . waiting isn’t a strong point for most of us.

Our lives are one mad dash as we pursue our achievements, accolades, and wealth. Each day we climb onto the spinning wheel of modern life and hurtle crazily along, like frantic mice, pumping our legs but often feeling as if we aren’t going anywhere. There’s always another goal for which to aim, a higher salary on offer, or a position to be obtained.

Even those not involved in business find themselves swept up in a desire to fill their lives. They start hobbies, join social groups, take up golf, hang out in coffee shops or pubs – anything to fill the day. Because quietness, solitude, and waiting surely can’t be desirable, they believe, not in the eyes of the world. We expect quick answers and ready solutions to our problems. We need to know that we’re still in charge of our lives, and that it’s we who determine our future. After all, didn’t Frank Sinatra teach us to sing “I did it my way”?

Then everything comes crashing down on us, and we’re no longer in control. Suddenly, all the predictability we sought in our lives disappears, and we despair. We cry out to God. We look for answers. We wake each day, expectant that this might be the day that our situation will be better. But at the end of the day, it’s just as it was, or perhaps even worse. The days roll into weeks and months, and we start to realise that we’re no longer in control and we need to release our hunger for order and predictability.

This is the waiting. It’s not easy, but it’s necessary, especially if the wilderness is to do its transformative work in our lives.

You might pray that God will bring an end to the waiting, and that he’ll lead you out of your wilderness experience. It’s not wrong to do so. Jesus himself tells the parable of a persistent widow who keeps pleading for justice from a judge. We’re expected to keep praying and to keep trusting that God hears our prayers. We need to remind ourselves that because God cannot lie and because he is faithful to his promises, he will guide us safely through the wilderness and will work all things together for good, in his perfect timing.

Many might view the forty years of wandering in the wilderness by the Israelites, as described in Exodus, only as a punishment for their disobedience. They certainly deserved to be punished, if one considers how many times they turned on the God who had delivered them from Egypt, and who had shown his power in the plagues and in leading them through the Red Sea. They rebelled and built false gods. They doubted God’s provision and complained that he’d rescued them from Egypt, only to kill them in the desert. They forgot his promises about the Promised Land, fearing the ‘giants’ who lived there instead of entering the land flowing with milk and honey.

But instead of seeing the forty years of wandering as a punishment, it’s more appropriate to see it as a preparation. It was a time of humbling themselves and of being entirely reliant on God’s provision and protection. It was a preparation for the moment when they would finally cross the Jordan River and realise that God’s promises had been true all along. This really was a land of abundance, made ready for his special, chosen people. Sadly, when we’re in the wilderness and when our impatience bangs on God’s apparently locked door, we don’t see the Big Picture. But he does, and we need to hang onto that.

In the book of James, we’re told that we should “count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” It’s worth looking at these verses in more detail. Firstly, the word “joy” is hardly the kind of emotion we’d associate with going through a trial. Yet this “joy” doesn’t mean “happiness” – it’s not an emotional delighting in our trial, which would be a bit strange and certainly not what God expects. Rather, we experience joy that we’re able to see God’s steadfast love for us in action. The trial isn’t there to crush us but to help us to know, even if only one day in retrospect, that God is able to see us through the trial.

These verses also speak about patience. As we wait, we’re to be patient, so that it can have its “perfect work” in us. The passage says: “that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing”. The words “perfect” and “complete” are surely what we most desire. Not in the eyes of the world but in God’s estimation. How about “lacking nothing”? It must, therefore, be worth our while to practise this patience, and to learn the art of waiting and of trusting all to God, even when it makes no sense to us.

Some thoughts to ponder:

• How difficult are you finding it to wait on God? Is there a verse or sentence above which could help to strengthen your faith as you wait on him?
• Can you see any evidence in your own life that God is "producing patience" in you during this time in the wilderness?