Why Is Waiting So Difficult?

2/27/2024

            Is there anything we do as humans that does not involve waiting?  I doubt it.  From slow drivers we can’t get around to almost anything else, waiting unfortunately seems to plague us.  And in the Western world at least, we hate waiting.  If you have ever been on time for a medical appointment, you know about waiting.  How about the typical vehicle registration experience, or the line, no matter how short, at the post office?  But have you ever wondered why?

            The Bible indicates that even God waits, as indicated in Genesis 15:16.  God’s timing is always perfect but built into it is His foreknowledge on how long He needs to wait…on us.  I thought it ironic this last Sunday morning as we sang, “We wait for You God..”, because He’s never late, but we usually are. 

            My wife and I seem to be cursed with a consistent ability to be on time in a world that is not.  If we arrange to be someplace, we are usually among the very first to arrive.  We joke about it of course, but it happens all the time.  It’s not difficult to be on time; one simply has to project about how long it would take to make the drive and begin it that many minutes ahead of time.  No big math issue, but there must be a lot of folks who begin their drive at the arrival time. 

When we lived in a small Colorado town, we noticed one couple who would arrive at church almost exactly 15 minutes late for the morning church service, and they did it that way every week, almost to the minute!  I always wondered why, if they could be exactly 15 minutes late, why couldn’t they start exactly 15 minutes early?  And I would bet all of us know people just like that.  They probably figured that if they arrived late, they wouldn’t have to wait for the service to begin.

Today I started thinking about just why, if this world has so much waiting built into it, did God arrange it that way?  And if so, which seems likely, what lessons are we missing by trying so hard to dodge it?  Several weeks ago I was waiting (after being right on time) for an eye appointment, and I had a lot of time to watch people, as they waited.  Every one, and I refer to adults, escaped into their cell phones as soon as their backsides hit their chairs!  Every one!  What amazing consistency!  I was looking at a whole waiting room full of people with their heads bowed into their phones.  A naked man could have walked through the room, and I would have been the only person to know about it.  We hate waiting!

Patience is a biblical virtue, and I didn’t come naturally equipped with an overabundance of it, so every now and then I pray for more.  Warning: this is a prayer that God always answers!

And every time I pray for patience, every slow driver in town lines up in front of me, and they clog both lanes!  Funny somehow, that you have to practice patience to get more of it, and it is aggravating because we hate waiting for it.

            God has created this world to move at His pace, not ours.  We can complain to high heaven, and we usually do, but it doesn’t really speed up any faster than He allows.  There is a perfect time for everything; every word we speak, every decision we make, every person that we come into contact with, and every event.  It is Satan’s job to throw monkey wrenches into that perfect timing, and the only way to avoid being derailed by it is to trust God in faith.  Have faith that He is never surprised because He can’t be, and His perfect time is still on track. 

            We end up again at FAITH, and that is always God’s perfect ending!

John