Waiting...Maidservant Mishaps

Waiting….                                                                    Waiting is hard.                               Much like trying not to stare at      the gaps in these      phrases.  We see the gap                                     and want to bring         the words                back into position or fill the space with                   something else - something useful and productive.  You know, tidy it up a bit.  It’s hard to just LEAVE it there, unfinished and discombobulated.  And why would we?  Allowing the "gap" seems almost irresponsible– doesn’t it?          

Waiting for the Promise by Elspeth Young

Abraham’s wife, Sarah, saw many gaps like these in her life.  For a long time her life appeared unfinished and discombobulated.  After being uprooted from her community, she waited for a home, after years of bareness she longed for a child, after assuming God has smited her, she waited on a blessing, just to name a few things.   At times she grew cynical in the wait (see Genesis 18:11-15).  After all, she spent many years disappointed and barren.  At nearly eighty year old, the best years were behind her by the time God brought His promise to her .  Waiting seemed ridiculous, almost irresponsible. She figured a maidservant was her only hope for such a child-blessing, her preoccupation with the promise kept her from yielding to God in it...her plan did not work out very well. God’s plan is often much different than ours. So after her plans failed there she was, back to square one waiting.  Doubtful, but waiting.  She probably wondered how God would ever tidy up her unfinished story.

2000 years ago, the Jewish people waited on an unfinished story too. After a much discombobulated history, and a few wilderness moments, there they were, "barren" and displaced, awaiting a promise of deliverance hundreds of years before it would ever come to pass...they waited for centuries!  There were long gaps in the sentence structure of God's story for them.  Like Sarah’s story, the plan for a Messiah to bring all the pieces together looked different than most expected. Also like Sarah, Israel grew weary of waiting and took matters into their own hands to get the job done.  (After all, that would be the responsible thing to do - right?) While a few chose to stay alert and watch for God, many went about inaugurating “maidservant” plans of their own in the form of various leader and kings.  Their plan didn’t work any better for them than Sarah's did for her.  Running ahead of God never works.   I know.  I’ve tried many times and it has never, not one time, turned out well. 

When hope and vision come from God, it is a fierce undertaking to stay yielded to his stride in it.  It's often hard to believe our maidservant-plan is not the best.  Sometimes we'd rather give the promise up altogether than wait for it....too much pain and disappointment.  How does one just leave the story unfin   ished and                discon   nec   ted?  In fact, if I'm to be entirely honest, I know when I am preoccupied with the promise more than I am with God, that's when waiting makes me crawl out of my skin!  However, in our frantic effort to fill in the “waiting-space” and bring the story together, we slowly realize we can’t and only God can.    I suppose that’s part of the reason God brings the wait, because the discomfort of unfinished business has the potential of moving us towards Him.  "Demoting" the promise and letting the gaps remain helps us stay surrendered and alert in the story, we can hold freely the promise and exchange our plan for His. We move from wanting to run our own kingdom to embracing His, which is far better than ours. 

It took Sarah many years to reconcile her plan with God’s.   The bigger the dream, the harder it is to surrender!  It’s easy to become cynical and doubtful when things don’t go as we planned. We may wonder if the situation is too barren to even birth a promise or if too much time has past, leaving our best years are behind us, but God is not bound by time, nor his eternal plan lost on the barren wilderness journey or maidservant-mistakes.   He will bring His purpose to completion (Phil 1:6).  God’s Kingdom  WILL come to pass in you, in me, and in this world we call home- He actually cares more about it than we do!  Our job is to        pause,          wait,         stay surrendered and alert, letting Him do it His way, in His time.
 

What are the Barren places in your life in which you desire God's deliverance?

Where are you tempted to take matters into your own hands and use "maidservant" ways to get the job done?


What would it look like to surrender your plan for His?

Romans 8:22-28 is a long scripture passage to end with but it says it so well that I couldn’t leave any of it out!

^“All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it’s not only around us; it’s within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We’re also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.

Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our [waiting] condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.”