Have you ever had to wait for something? If the answer is yes… Go ahead and take two minutes to read these next 800 words.
There are two extremes of waiting. There is waiting in line at Target, waiting to get your food when you're hungry, or waiting for a friend to text you back. These are the simple ones… (yet, how many of us are guilty of being impatient -- yeah, me too). On the other end of the spectrum there is waiting for that significant other to make their way into your life, waiting for test results, waiting to get pregnant, waiting for a relationship to be healed or waiting for a season in life to change. The reality of it is, we all have experienced the waiting game at some point or another. My question to you is are you waiting FOR it or are you waiting ON it? This simple word exchange makes a drastic difference.
To me, if you are waiting FOR something you are still living. You are not being stagnant or letting the absence of the thing you are waiting on keep you from doing. You see this time as a chance to figure things out, to grow, and to learn. You allow this time as an opportunity to be sharpened.
If you are waiting ON something… You are simply complacent with where you are. You may even consider yourself as being exactly where you are supposed to be. The time that's passing by is perceived as another day closer… But you are doing nothing in between. You are letting the waiting call the shots and your role is simply just to stay put.
When you wait on someone you tend to be stagnant. In this situation we are the one ready and the other end is the one who needs to do all the work. Think about it. When you wait on a friend you stand outside and simply let the time pass… Because once your friend gets there, your life can move on. This is the same in life. When we wait on something we think there is no work to be done on our end. We are simply already ready.
Have you ever been waiting on a friend and the moment they get there you realize you forgot something? Or is this just me? I can be standing there waiting for 10 minutes and the moment they get to where I'm waiting I realize I don't have my purse, my phone, or my car keys. If we are not careful we will do this in life. We will wait and wait and wait (and possibly become impatient in the process) and the moment the thing we are waiting on arrives… We will realize we are not ready. Maybe we forgot our ability to trust, maybe we forgot to save the money, or maybe we forgot to truly believe this day would come. Or maybe… We didn't forget, but we did not prepare.
Where you are and where you want to be, may currently be what seems like two different lifetimes. Enjoy the journey, my friend. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in our destination that we forget the time in between. We see our day to day life as mundane. The time is going to pass whether you want it to or not and that is something you cannot control. You can only control what you do with the time in between now and then.
When God asks us to wait, know that there is a divine purpose. If we do not allow that truth to resonate in our lives, we will not place any value on waiting when there is so much value to be found there. When you have to wait on something, you know what it's like to not have it. You know the longing your heart has and so does our God. He is the one who has placed that desire within you and he is a faithful God worthy of our trust in his promises. He does not keep anyone waiting just because he feels like it. Waiting is a big part of the journey. Again, if we do not perceive this as significant we will miss necessary sharpening moments.
I challenge you to take some time out of your day and to ask the Lord to reveal to you the purpose behind the wait. Be careful not to focus so much on the destination that you forget to enjoy the journey. Live each day to make a difference in this world and make the conscious effort to be molded more into who He has created you to be every single day. Go ahead, make the wait worth it by becoming a better human in the process. You may end up right where you planned or who knows... You may end up somewhere different to discover that His plan is far better than you could have ever imagined.
