The Sacred Echo
07/25/2010 - How Long?
In her book The Sacred Echo Margaret Feinberg tells the story of her friend named Meredith that she's been praying for for years.
She writes, "Meredith is a friend I've known for more than a decade. She's smart, sweet, and beautiful. She's one of those women that you can't spend more than five minutes without thinking she's going to be an amazing mother one day. As a nurse at a children's hospital, her ability to love, nurture, and encourage kids is constantly on display. She embodies many of the characteristics of the woman described in Proverbs 31 ... resourceful, generous, full of dignity and integrity.
"Over the years, I've watched her handle singleness with poise and grace. Though her heart's desire has always been marriage and family, she's refused to put her life on hold. Instead, she spends her time, money, and energy serving and loving others.
"As I bring her before the Father this day, I'm echoing a request he's heard a thousand times before, Will you please bring Meredith a husband?
"This prayer carries extra weight for me as I hand it over to God, because I've tasted the bittersweetness that comes with waiting for a spouse. Though I was never one of those gals who went to bed with wedding bells dancing in her head, I remember waking up sometime around the age of twenty-seven and thinking, I want to be married.
"And though my own prayers were eventually answered, I still feel a phantom pain when I speak Meredith's name, an aching reminder of what it's like to wait on God. That's when the heart questions emerge? Why is my beautiful, fabulous, and lovely friend still single despite an unquenchable desire to be a wife and mother, years of patiently waiting on God, and thousands upon thousands of prayers by friends and family? And why do I find myself praying the same prayers over and over again for so many others?
She says, "If prayer is one part speaking and one part listening, I think there's a third part people don't talk about as much: waiting. As my eyes glance over my list of prayer requests I realize that I've been sitting in the waiting room of prayer for many years."
Can anybody relate to that? Maybe not the marriage part, although I'm sure some of you can, but the waiting part? Have any of you ever felt like you've been sitting right next to Margaret Feinberg in the waiting room of prayer? If so, raise your hands. How many here feel like you're there right now waiting for something to happen in your life or in someone else's life that you're praying for? Keep your hands up. Now for those of you who don't have your hands up, how many of you are not telling the truth?!
This morning we continue our summer series called The Sacred Echo: Exploring the Mystery of Prayer. It's a series about prayer, but it's more than a series on prayer it's a series about how God leads and guides and works in our lives if we invite him too. And a big part of that process involves waiting. We can't follow Jesus and not be waiting for something. Did you hear what I just said? We can't follow Jesus and not be waiting for something. And I don't know about you, but I hate to wait!
Yet waiting is part of life, isn't it? And it starts early. Babies scream because they can't wait to eat or to sleep or to get out of their play pen or their wet diaper. I can remember as a kid that I couldn't wait to start school like my big brother, Ken. I think my mom couldn't wait either because she sent me a year early, before I was even potty trained!
When I got a little older I couldn't wait until I could ride a bike, a big bike, a two wheeler. When I was seven I couldn't wait until I turned eight because that's when I could start playing Little League baseball.
When I was thirteen I couldn't wait to get a mini bike like my other friends had. When I was fifteen I couldn't wait to turn sixteen and get my driver's license. When I was seventeen I couldn't wait to graduate from high school and go to college.
When I was in college I couldn't wait to finish and finally be done with homework and tests and research papers only to go on to seminary and spend four more years waiting to be finished with more homework, tests ,and research papers!
And as I watched all my friends get engaged and get married and have children I couldn't wait to find the right woman for me. And I finally did at the age of thirty which seemed really old at the time, but now sounds rather young to me!
Waiting is tough and if the truth be known some of us would rather do the wrong thing than wait for God to act. In fact, someone has described temptations as short cuts. I think that's true. Yet as hard as waiting can be, there's one thing worse than waiting and that's wishing that we had! We can't follow Jesus and not be waiting for something.
I guess what I've observed over the years in my life and in the lives of others is that waiting is the norm, not the exception so we need to get used to it. On life's highway bursts of green lights are few and far between. Most of the journey seems to be spent stuck in bumper to bumper traffic inching our way through yellow lights and waiting at red ones.
Why so much waiting? That's a good question and I'm not sure I know the answer to that. I think it may have something to do with the development of patience and perseverance in our character which is a good thing. Patience is a fruit of the Holy Spirit and perseverance is a virtue that's held high in the Scriptures. I think waiting reveals the reality of how little control we have over life and how much we need to rely on God. Waiting can purify our prayers and lead to some healthy self-reflection.
I'm not sure of all the reasons why we have to wait so much, but I can assure you that if you're waiting for something right now in prayer, you are not alone. Others are waiting right along side you. Maybe not for the same thing, but they're waiting as well. Look at the hands that were raised.
That's because waiting is woven into the very fabric of human history. God is waiting. Creation is waiting. Humanity is waiting. We're all waiting for redemption, for everything that's broken to finally be put back together again. We see signs of the kingdom and catch glimpses of it now and then, we feel the aches and the groans, but we know that what we're waiting for is not yet here. And we wonder "How long?"
The words "How long?" are found over fifty times in the Bible. Waiting is part of the story of God, so no wonder its part of our stories as well.
Adam and Eve hid in the shrubs covered in fig leaves waiting to see how God would respond to their disobedience. Noah waited for the first drops of rain to fall after he had spent decades building a boat in his backyard. Abraham, perhaps the most patient person of all, waited almost forty years for God to fulfill his promise that one day he and Sarah would have a son. And when he was 100 and Sarah was 90 that son was finally born. Jacob waited for a promised wife. Joseph waited for dream that he had as a boy to finally come true. The children of Israel waited for centuries before they entered into the land that God had promised them.
All these people waited for something worthwhile to happen, why should I be any different? But what struck me most this week was that the very first person to ask the question "How long?" was not a prophet or a pilgrim, it was God himself. The Father of Time is the first one in Scripture to ask "How long?"
In the book of Exodus we read that the Hebrew people were in bondage in Egypt to Pharaoh for over 400 years. They were slaves forced to work in the fields and to make bricks to build great cities.
But God wanted to deliver them. He wanted to set his people free and so he raised up a liberator named Moses and gave him this promise in Exodus 6:6-7, Therefore, say to the Israelites, "I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. 7I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians."
But it wouldn't happen right away. Instead, it would take a series of ten plagues before Pharaoh would finally cave in and reluctantly release God's people.
And before it happened we read in Exodus 10:3, So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said to him, "This is what the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, says: 'How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me? Let my people go, so that they may worship me.'"
"How long?" God says. "How long will you dig in your heels, Pharaoh, and refuse to release my people?" That's what caught my eye this week. God himself says, "How long?" That's encouraging. God is concerned about the length of our captivity both in Egyptand in this broken world that we live in right now. He longs to set us free and know what it feels like to wait. He understands the ache in our soul.
When I think about waiting in prayer I think about two kinds of waiting. The first is the Great Wait. That's waiting for Jesus to return and God's kingdom to come and his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Last week, I met a man who told me that the name of his daughter was Maranatha. I said, "Maranatha! That's a cool name, kind of different." And he said, "Yes it is. It's from the Bible and it means 'Come quickly Lord Jesus.'" Every time this Dad says his daughter's name he's reminded of the Great Wait and the blessed hope of the coming of the Lord.
That image is beautifully described in Revelation 21:1-5, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2I saw the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with people, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." 5He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!" Then he said, "Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true."
That's what we call the dream of God around here. It's God's dream to dwell among his people and live with them forever. It's God's dream to bring heaven to earth. And that dream is going to come true one day, but in the meantime we long for it like an engaged couple longs for their wedding day when the bride walks down the aisle beautifully dressed for her husband.
This week Jennifer and I met with a couple that I'm going marry on August 20 and they can't wait! They're counting the days and even the hours now until their wedding arrives. And that's true of most couples getting ready for their big day. They long for it to come.
And so do we, as we wait patiently for the return of the king because we know that when he comes back he'll put an end to poverty and injustice and war and violence and crime and disease and famine and earthquakes and oil spills in the Gulf and even death itself, all the things we pray about over and over and over again. He will wipe away every tear from our eyes.
And there's a sense in which we're not just waiting for God, but we're waiting with God, a God who says, "How long?", a God who aches to set his people free. For as much as we long for redemption and reconciliation and restoration to come God longs for it even more.
So there's the Great Wait. But then there'sOur Personal Wait, waiting to graduate, waiting to get married, waiting to have children, waiting to get a job, waiting to get a better job, waiting to buy a home, waiting to sell a home, waiting to get divorced or to get reconciled, waiting for test results, waiting to get healed, or waiting for a loved to get healed or get straightened out or come to Christ or come back to Christ. And on and on it goes.
I was talking to a woman this week who said, "All I ever do is wait!" And there are a lot of us who feel that way. I told her, "You need to come on Sunday." We can't avoid waiting. It's part of life. The key is what we do in the meantime.
Ancient Jewish scholars liked to say that God is the Aleph and the Tav. Aleph is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and Tav is the last letter. It's like saying in English, "God is the A and the Z. Or in Greek, God is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end."
But then they would add that God is also the Mem. Mem is the middle letter of the Hebrew alphabet. God is the Aleph, the Mem, and the Tav. And by that they meant that God is not just the beginning and the end, but he's part of the In-between as well. He wasn't just with them at the start and someday will be with them at the end, but God is with them every step of the way. He's the Mem. He's the God of the In-between.
In her book Feinberg writes, "Waiting always leads to the same place: In-between. Sometimes I think the place of In-between is one of the most gnarly, dark places in life because you aren't fully here and you aren't fully there. Emotions, hopes, and dreams are strewn across a seemingly endless list of possibilities and potentials. When you're In-between, the next jetty of hope could be moments away. Or not. Emotions run forward, and fears hold back. Seams of uncertainty can burst at any given second. If you stay in the undercurrent very long, sometimes you can feel like you're losing yourself."
I think that's so true. Most of us are in the In-between with something in our lives right now. And the question is what do we do when we're there? Do we keep praying and calling out to God or do we give up and throw in the towel? That's a good question. And I'm not sure there's one specific answer to that because every situation is different. There is a time to persist and a time to give up, not give up on prayer, but to give up on praying the same thing and perhaps change the request we're asking of God.
Two weeks ago we looked at the story that Jesus told in Luke 18 to make the point that we should always pray and not give up. But it's during the In-between that we have time to evaluate our prayers and what we're asking God for. Instead, of changing the situation he may want to change us and our attitude to the situation.
Margaret goes on to say, "Over the last few years, I've noticed that the process of waiting that accompanies prayer brings impurities like fear, lack of faith, and doubt to the surface of my soul. Once exposed, I hand them back to God in a blend of confession, repentance, and celebration, grateful for the knowledge that God's still at work inside me."
So we go back to Meredith and her desire to be married and start of family. But still she waits. Yet in the meantime she keeps busy spending her time, money, and energy serving and loving others and trusting God that if and when he's ready he'll provide a spouse for her. But that doesn't stop her from serving him and because of that her story is not so much about what God has left undone in her life as it is about what God has done in and through her life while she waits. May that be said of us as well.