Wait-Wait

Wait-wait on the Lord, the psalmist encourages. So I wait-waited in my prayer window, lingering long, asking for a word, asking God to guide my prayers. They circumnavigated the globe and then when I checked a message on Messenger, it was a series of amazing Gospel singers, one after the other, singing the well-known spiritual, He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.

Of course he does. Of course we know that. But it was so encouraging to hear it sung with conviction and grace and beauty.

I saw, in my imagination, a root. A root which stretched underground, out of sight, but which was sprouting along its length. Sprouting new green shoots, shoots reaching through the darkness to the light.

May this time of fear and darkness be shot through with rays of brilliant light, Jesus. May this light draw many out of the darkness as they search for meaning and comfort. May we be bearers of hope and faith in the goodness of God, as we email, text and talk on the phone to our family, friends and neighbours.

We all have time now to wait-wait on the Lord. He is waiting patiently for each of us to draw near.

Wait

My swimsuit dripped a puddle as I waited. A young woman came out of the changing rooms, shifting impatiently and looking frequently towards the men’s changing room door. Finally she could wait no longer, knocked a warning and poked her head into the dressing room to check her dad’s progress.

She came back, explaining, ‘They’re all in there just chatting. One of the men says he went to school in Crieff sixty years ago.’

‘That’d be my husband,’ I nodded.

Waiting. Much of my life seems to be waiting. 

‘Wait for the Lord. Be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.’

Living in an instant age, it can be hard to wait. But when we see the undeniable fingerprint of God on answered prayer, the wait is oh so worthwhile.

Hope

My hope is built on Jesus Christ, anchored in the word of God, and activated by the Holy Spirit.

It is in the tough times that we get down and dirty and prepare the way for Jesus to enter into our own lives and also the lives of those for whom we pray. It’s as we wrestle on our knees for others that the mountains are brought down and the rough ground is levelled. 

There are many blessings in the darkness as we await the dawn. As we bring despairing hearts to Jesus, he exchanges the despair for hope. Our hope is in the faithful King of Kings.

Just Wait

Advent is the season of preparation, but also the season of waiting. Waiting for God to show his hand, so to speak, by revealing his master plan for our salvation, a plan devised before the creation of the world and carried out by a helpless infant born to a virgin in a dirty barn two thousand years ago.

He showed his hand in Jesus, God made man, fully human, fully divine, impossible for us to fully understand but possible, through the Holy Spirit, for us to fully love. 

My readings today have reflected the idea of waiting. Psalm 33:22: Let your unfailing love surround us, Lord, for our hope is in you alone. There is an expectancy there, as well as a quiet waiting. Patient. Trusting that God will not let us down.

The Lord watches over those who fear him, those who rely on his unfailing love. 

It’s not always easy to rely on his unfailing love. Sometimes we are caught in the grip of anxiety, of grief, of depression, of disappointment, of pain, and he seems to tarry. But Isaiah 30:18 also celebrates the faithfulness of God to deliver: For the Lord is a faithful God. Blessed are those who wait for his help.

Blessed are those who wait for his help.

It’s not easy to wait. May he strengthen us all to wait for his help and prevent us from trying to devise our own, woefully inadequate, solution ourselves.

Fill 'er up!

When I was growing up in California in the ‘50s, I remember my parents driving into gas stations, winding down the car window and saying to the attendant – who usually ran out to the car – ‘fill ‘er up’. 

The cheerful attendant would position the nozzle into the tank and get it filling and while it was humming away, he would open the hood (bonnet) and check the oil and water. Then he would wash the windshields (windscreens) front and back. 

If they asked, he would check the air in the tires (tyres).

Then Mom or Dad would hand over probably about $10 and drive off. 

Changed days. Of course I live in Scotland now, but it’s pretty much the same as California. Drive into the gas (petrol) station, maybe waiting a few minutes behind other cars lining (queuing) up, finally get to the pump and get out of the car (in Scotland, often in the rain and wind). Swipe your credit card – in CA punch in your zip code, in Scotland punch in your PIN number – choose the grade of fuel and begin pumping. If the windscreen is particularly dirty you might take the time to wash it with the squeegee and bubbly water on the forecourt. Never bother to check oil or water – you have to do that at home.

And air in the tires? Sure, if you want to check it yourself over there at the side of the station, but you need the correct coins. Air, in Scotland, comes at a price.

What I love about God is that I can slip into my prayer alcove, slump or lounge or sit up straight and ask him to simply, ‘fill ‘er up’. He just loves that, I think: for us to come to him with no prayer agenda, no particular requests, just to sit down and wait for him to speak to us – maybe through the Bible, maybe through our senses, imaginations, or a still small voice in our inner beings  - to refill our empty tanks, to clean the lenses of our vision, to fill us again with the breath of his Holy Spirit. 

Mindfulness has all the attention right now, being incorporated into school and work schedules, being touted by the rich and famous, but in fact, Christians have known about the benefits of individual time apart, in silence, waiting, for eons.

Don’t run on empty today. Ask the Lord to ‘fill ‘er up’.

Elder

Ground elder, that is.

A pernicious weed which is gradually claiming my entire flower border. It sends strong white roots in all directions, which then pop up as a new plant before it, too, sends out new roots. It creeps up walls, getting a ‘foothold’ wherever there might be a dabble of dirt. 

You may have seen them growing wild, putting up flower stems at some point in the summer months. I’m on a mission to eradicate them from my flowers, but I think it may be Mission Impossible. The trouble is, the strong root penetrates more viscous roots and then pops a plant out, so that they are all so intertwined that in order to remove the weed, I risk killing the plant or flower as well.

Jesus told a parable about this situation. He said to leave the weeds until the harvest is coming in, lest the plants be killed as well. Of course he was speaking about people, not plants or weeds at all. 

People who live his Life, and people who live a lie. Those bearing fruit, and those which are barren.

I understand the dangers, and don’t want to decimate the many plants which are just beginning to grow after a dormant winter. Neither do I want a crop of ground elder.

That’s why my mission is impossible. I will never succeed in pulling out every single elder plant, because I’m loathe to kill some of my better established flowers. 

I’m so glad that Jesus’ mission was not impossible; that he is the perfect one to save each and every one of us. And that he doesn’t take chances of uprooting a fruitful life, just to dig out a very annoying weed.

He can wait.