For from days of old they have not heard or perceived by ear, Nor has the eye seen a God besides You,

Who acts in behalf of the one who waits for Him. – Isaiah 64:4 

Now of faith, hope and love, abide in these three, but the greatest of these is love!  When Paul wrote these words to the Corinthians, he was calling out the three characteristics that should characterize the life of a follower of Christ.  As John wrote that God is love, and Jesus prayed in John 17:26 that the love of God shared between the Father and the Son would also be in us, as Jesus is in us, so love for God and love for people should be the defining characteristic of saving faith.  Jesus said that the way people will know that we are disciples is by having love for one another (John 13:34-35).  This is the central characteristic of the Christian, that the love of God is in us, transforms us, and is manifest through us into the world.  It is by this love that we know faith and we know hope.  We have faith in God for the manifestation of the things we hope for because God is good, God is love, God is sovereign, God is kind, God is guiding our steps in life, and God looks upon us with adoration.  To have the assurance of this in our bones gives us strength by understanding that the hopefulness of hope is in the Hands of the one who created all things including you and me, and the gift of hope is one of the greatest ways that God shows us His love.

As previously stated, to hope is to have faith in what is to be, but it is also to wage war against despair.  Despair is the opposite of hope and it gains ground in our soul when the light of hope dims.  The universe can be a very scary place without hope; without the light of hope, it is a place where fear places the crushing weight of despair on our shoulders.  To fight this fear is the hardest work of waiting, but we can do it because God has given us a hope that does not disappoint, allows us to persevere, and builds our Christlike character because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5).  This is the place that gives legs to our faith when we are tired of walking.  This is a hard place to be because it shines a light on the way we thought things should happen; while it shows that the plan in my head was not aligned with the plan of God, it quietly shows that God is working on our plan.  It is the place where not yet, feels like not ever! When the reality of waiting sets in, we can quiet our souls and begin to understand one of two things: 1) Our plan may be right, but our timing is wrong, or 2) God has a better plan that is beyond what we could ask or imagine.

The Flyer and the Catcher

(This is a retelling from Sabbatical Journey by Henri Nouwen)

Friends of Henri described to him what is necessary to be successful as a trapeze artist.  The success they described is the unrestricted trust between the flyer and the catcher.  The flyer is to let go of ropes to fly through the air and be caught by the catcher.  They said that in order to be successful, the flyer must trust the catcher to catch them, the flyer must never ever try to grab the catcher.  The flyer must let go and remain absolutely still while moving through the air.  If the flyer tries to catch the catcher, they will likely not be caught, so they must have absolute trust in full vulnerability.  Complete trust and dependence is the only way for the flyer and the catcher to be successful, so the flyer must wait in the air until the Catcher plucks them from the air to safety!

The story above is a picture of vulnerability that captures the essence of how it feels to wait.  It is a place of being absolutely still, suspended in mid-air, so that the Catcher can grab hold of us.  When we are not absolutely still, the sensation of falling sets in and can make it difficult for the catcher to grab the panicked, flailing, anxiety ridden flyer from the air.  For us, while waiting, we live in a tension between the hope of “what if” and the temptation to see where our best thinking will take us.  We see this with Abraham who was longing to have a son, so after 28 years he and his wife agreed that producing a child with Hagar must be what God meant in the promise of a son.  What this actually shows us is that they did not believe that with God, all things are possible (Luke 1:37; Mathew 19:26; Mark 9:23-24) as they reasoned that God was limited by their age.  In our human thinking, this was not unreasonable, but when we see the circumstances through the lens of faith, knowing that His lovingkindness has already been manifest beyond measure in my life, then we can embrace the hopefulness of hope!

Waiting on God can be wearing to the soul, it is easy to feel forgotten, especially when we are surrounded by others who seem to be blessed in abundance.  We do ourselves no good in living lives of comparison, but it is not always easy to ignore.  Especially when bad people have received the blessings that you have praying for, possibly for years.  We all have stories, examples of life appearing unfair and we just want to look up, shrug our shoulders and say, “really? them? how is that fair? hello? I don’t understand! If I am being punished, just tell me!”  I have certainly done this, but not without Lamentations 3:39 coming to mind.  But that is the point.  Whenever these feeling on injustice and self-pity rise up from within us, that is a good indicator that God is showing us our need to recalibrate our hearts.  This is an important work in the hearts of believers that is only exposed in our time of waiting.  In my own life, my current seasons of waiting are 24 years, 15 years, 9 years and 4 years, and though I have prayed everyday for years for what I know to be God-honoring desires, it is easy to feel alone in it.  I often need to take a breath, let it out, and remember the good things that God has done in me through each encounter. Each situation has produced patience, perseverance, surrender, kindness, and the ongoing lesson of praying without doubting.  That last one continues to be difficult because so many times I thought a blessing was close, but my timing was misaligned with Gods timing.  That said, there has been much fruit, but more than anything God is teaching me how to love unconditionally, and though I have read many books on the love of God, the philosophy of love, love sonnets, love and marriage, etc. the heart work that has happened was only possible through the cultivated desire to love like Jesus tested in real life relationships.  The periods of waiting have also exposed areas of sin in my life related to a discontent heart, fear, idolatry, pride, independence, conditional love, unsteady faith, and the need to trust God in a more unreasonable way.  That is all counter-intuitive to my human thinking, but the Spirit often reminds me that His thoughts are not my thoughts and His ways are not my ways, and that allows me to take the next step towards the high places; I suspect that one day I will reach the top, look down from the mountain, and the clear view from Mount Perspective will reveal all the “whys” on this journey, but for now we trust!  

Prayer: Eternal God, heavenly Father, you have graciously accepted us as living members of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ, and you have fed us with spiritual food in the Sacrament of His Body and Blood.  Send us now into the world in peace and grant us strength and courage to love and serve you with gladness and singleness of heart, through Christ our Lord. Amen!