Daily Delight
I hate waiting rooms. Waiting rooms of every kind; in the doctor's office, at an airport gate, the waiting room you are seated in before an interview. Even just waiting in traffic brings out the worst in me. I’m suddenly impatient and annoyed when I’m forced to wait. Dallas Willard said, “Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.”
My expectation of hurry has become second nature in a world I can basically have any item shipped to my house in two days (thank you Amazon Prime) and surf the internet in seconds with my iPhone. There have been seasons where I feel like God placed me in a waiting room and because I perceive that nothing is happening, my first inclination is to turn around and leave. I leave the hard places God is leading me to wait in, because I’m in too much of a hurry.
In the past three years God has asked me to not be so quick to leave. To not value the time carefully carved out in my appointments, calendar cubes and five-year-plans over time spent in His presence, in His timing. The need for hurry increases with each new email to respond to, deadline to meet and dream to achieve, taking time to slow down seems impossible. Unlike our culture, God is not in a hurry.
“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end” (Ecclesiastes 3:11 NIV).
The NCV translation says, “God does everything just right and on time, but people can never completely understand what he is doing.”
Seasons of waiting are not in anticipation of a conclusive answer. He puts us through a process for a purpose, even when it makes absolutely no sense. God is not asking us to understand Him, God is asking us to meet with Him. To wait on Him. To stay in the waiting room even when it feels unbearable. Even when we feel busy, the time spent in waiting that brings us closer to the people God created us to be is never wasted. Accepting the waiting is accepting His will and allows us to receive presence without the pressure of hurry.
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Photo: @byhannahrose
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Amy Werner
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Amy grew up near the mouth of the Appalachian trail in a northeastern town in Georgia. She now lives as a writer and science nerd in our nation’s capital, navigating life as a 20-something obsessed with finding sanctuaries in nature on the edges of the urban hustle of D.C.
This new transition to D.C. has been a season of learning a posture of surrender and peaceful silence found with God even amid the noise of cultural expectations and standards.
Amy is passionate about seeking justice, finding faith in all of life's details and championing young women to see and appreciate their divine value and worth. Amy loves stories, campfires, donuts and strong friendships, often the combination of all these elements equals her happy place.
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