Life in the Waiting Room

[The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are a reflection on Sunday’s message, which can be heard here each week: http://myencounterchurch.org/#/hear-a-message]


When I get home from work, sometimes I’m lucky enough to have a container of leftovers waiting in the fridge. All I need to do is throw it in the microwave, and a few minutes later, there’s dinner. Microwaves are great like that. 

We live in a microwave society. New products claim to be “Faster than ever,” if you don’t like standing in line at the store you can order it online, and saving time is a common slogan in ads. Why wait for the oven when it can be cooked in the microwave? 

Yet the story Pastor Dirk talked about on Sunday is a very different picture. I had never realized how much time passed between when David was anointed to when he actually became king--about forty years. As someone who has been around for just over half that long, I can hardly imagine waiting forty years for something to come to be. And it wasn’t an elusive, “This might happen”--it was guaranteed by God. David would become king.

As we head into 2014, most of us are probably waiting for something. It could be for a new job, children, a relationship, a vacation, or for God to finally tell us what we’re supposed to do with our lives. Some of these waitings may already have a guaranteed outcome, and we’re simply sitting in the in-between time. Others, though, may have no guarantees attached. We may desire them deeply, even know that what we’re asking for is a good, God-honoring thing,and yet here we sit in life’s waiting room. 

It can be easy to become frustrated and bitter in the waiting, to see it only as time that could be better used if we already had what we wanted. I think part of what makes waiting on God so difficult is that the world around us often feeds us the “microwave” mentality--that if we don’t have what we want today, we should go ahead and do what it takes to get it tomorrow, no matter the cost--be it financial or otherwise. 

God doesn’t always work on microwave time though.

King David learned that, as he waited those forty years to become king, and I suspect that many of us are learning that too. As we wait, we may have the chance to take action to get what we want sooner, like David did when he had the opportunity to kill King Saul. It would’ve been the easy, faster way for David to get what he wanted. 

God doesn’t ask us to do things the fast, easy way though--he asks us to do things his way. 

His way isn’t always straightforward or comfortable. Life in the waiting room can get difficult, lonely, or disheartening, but if we believe that God is who he says he is, we can know that his way is better. There is opportunity in the waiting room to learn and grow and be shaped more like Jesus, if only we take it. 


As we enter a new year, may we live in the waiting room not with dismay, but with hope and eager expectation.


[Brianna DeWitt attends Encounter Church and lives, works, and writes in Grand Rapids, MI. You can see more of her musings on her personal blog at http://awritespot.wordpress.com and tweets @bwitt722.]