Lady-in-waiting

Waiting…it can be such a challenging thing. Not for you, though, God. Why is that? Is it because you know the outcome of each event? You see what has passed, what is, and what is to come, all at the same time. Kind of like a picture drawn on a series of transparency sheets. Looking down at all of them stacked in perfect order, you see the finished product. For us, we are stuck on a single page of that transparency looking at what sometimes in no way resembles its true form…waiting for the next page to come down and help us make sense of what is going on. God, you can look at a pregnant woman and yet see the child that she carries growing up, see the children that child will bear, and even see the elderly adult that child will become. You must wait like a baker who has meticulously and flawlessly prepared the ingredients for a delicious cake and is watching it rise to perfection in the oven. Knowing that in due time it will be ready to eat, admiring your superb culinary skills. How we as humans long for such assurance - You are to be admired for the strength in your confidence.
But we can’t see past the ingredients list; we often feel the mixing will never end; we await the pre-heating oven as if it will never come. And then when the baking begins, we are unsure if the timer will ever ding or if the cake will turn out right after all. But what about the times, God, when you know the outcome will be negative, or worse, tragic? How is your waiting then? Do you feel angst as each step nears the catastrophic completion? Does sorrow sweep over you knowing that suffering will be the picture seen once the transparencies are all lined up? If there’s one thing we know it’s that, as your children, your heartbreaks for us when we hurt.
There’s something else to consider, too. That there is a purpose and design in suffering. Because of your strength, you not only see the good but God you can take the terrible and make it worth while. Even in the tragic, there is order – so that what happens to us is not accidental or a product of chaos, but falls in to array, like the transparency sheets. The same strength that comes from your confidence of knowing good outcomes is also present in our bad times and can carry us through. Help me, God, as I wait on you. Weary and anxious, may I rest in the strength of your confidence – trusting that you know what’s coming, and that good or bad, you see it, know it, and have a plan for it.