Wading Through the Waiting
Did you know that elephants poop 12 times a day? I only know this because I was thinking about Noah and I started to wonder about the incredible amount of manure that they must have dealt with on a daily basis. I learned that a zoo produces between two and four tons of poop a day. That’s a lot to deal with while you’re trapped in a boat with every animal in the world.
I have to confess, I thought for a long time that Noah and his family only spent just over 40 days on the ark, I knew it rained for 40 days and 40 nights and I just assumed they landed shortly after that. Well, I guess I never read the story closely, because it turns out that Noah’s family spent around 370 days on the ark. That’s a lot of poop.
I can’t begin to fathom what it must have been like to sit in the ark for more than a year. I’d imagine that, while the rain came down, it felt like a refuge; a safe place through the storm. But, when the rain stops, safe places start to feel like prisons and you long for the fresh air again. I imagine that there were days that felt like forever as they dreamed about the new world they would step into and the new people they would become.
As a man, I’ll never know what it’s like to be pregnant (which is a very good thing since I’m a whiner) but I imagine that the anticipation is not that different. So many days full of waiting and wondering, trying to prepare for a future that you can’t predict. I think about what Mary must have been thinking on that five or six day journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem. I wonder if she thought she was failing. This certainly wasn’t the way she imagined things when the angel visited. Whatever she was thinking, I’m sure she was tired of waiting.
However we feel about waiting, the Bible shows us its necessity. The need for rest and preparation before moving forward is as old as creation itself.
Genesis 2:2-3 (niv)
By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.
Go down the list of Bible luminaries and you’ll find a lot of waiting:
Abraham and Sarah were well past child-bearing age when they had Isaac.
Moses was 80 when he led the Israelites out of Egypt.
David waited 15 years after being anointed to become King of Israel.
Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness before He started His ministry.
We have to face the fact that the act of waiting might be just as essential to the person we are becoming as anything we do ourselves.
No baker mixes the ingredients and expects the cake to be done. The cake not only has to go through the heat of the oven, but also must be given the time to cool. Trying to hurry the process only causes disaster. Time is an important part of any recipe.
Waiting is hard. We live in a world that trains us to expect everything right away. We have drive-thrus, instant coffee, high-speed streaming and Amazon Prime same-day delivery. We spend so much time moving that the state of being still feels foreign and wrong. We begin to doubt what we’re doing, what God wants from us and if we’re even facing the right direction.
It rained on Noah for 40 days, there were 330 rain-free days after that. You have to assume that, at some point, he wondered if he’d ever get off that boat. At some point he got so tired of the animals, the noise, the SMELL that he wondered if he could make it another day.
I’m sure Mary felt the same way. Even with modern comforts, women who are that pregnant aren’t supposed to travel like that. I’m sure the doubt crept in, the impatience, the desire to just get it over with. I’m sure it wasn’t a particularly enjoyable journey. And that doesn’t even begin to factor in what it was like when Joseph had to break the news about the stables.
Paul knew we’d struggle. When he wrote to the church at Phillipi he started with an assurance:
Philippians 1:6 (niv)
being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
Like most people, I hate waiting－but I’m learning to appreciate it. I’m learning that this period is an opportunity. An opportunity to discover things about God and my relationship to him that I would never have found otherwise. An opportunity to push beyond myself and try new things.
If our trials show us who we really are, then maybe waiting can show us who we might become.
The advent story takes place in a world waiting, groaning under the oppression of sin and death. That’s where Mary is in our story: waiting, tired, beat down. She knows something’s coming, she doesn’t know exactly what it’ll look like but she knows it’s going to be great. She’s tired, but she has hope.
The world is still waiting, though not exactly for the same thing – understand that the birth of Jesus was the start of something, not the finish. The finish is coming and it’s going to be glorious, but for now, we wait. It may seem hard; it may seem like it’ll never end; it may seem like you can’t last one more day, but it’s coming. No one explains this better than Paul:
Romans 8:18-21 (niv)
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
As we go through this season of waiting, what are you doing to prepare for what God will have you become?
Becoming generous
weekly family activity - Waiting
Each week of this Advent season your family has an opportunity to grow in its generosity.
Waiting can be tough, but we can often use the time that someone is waiting as an opportunity to bless them. As a practical application, pay the bill of the person behind you in the drive-thru this week. We don’t often get to see the results of our generosity, but a small act of kindness can turn someone’s day around. Think about others you see waiting. How might you be a blessing to them?
To follow along with this study, mark your calendars for Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays in these weeks leading up to Christmas. Each post will be hosted here. If what you’re learning is meaningful to you, click one of the share buttons at the top of these posts to invite more people on this journey of becoming.
We also invite you to spend Sunday mornings with us to hear what the pastors have to share with us during this season. Services start at 9:30 and 11:15am each week. See you there!
Weekly Reading - Dec 16-20
Monday Luke 2:1-20
Tuesday Isaiah 52:7-9
Wednesday Matthew 2:1-23
Thursday Acts 5:27-32
Friday John 3:1-21