What are you waiting for?

My husband and I are “professional waiters”. No, we do not work in the food industry, but we do have some experience in waiting for God’s timing in our lives. We were good friends for a year before we even considered dating, waited two years after that to finally marry, and have waited three years and counting to adopt a child.

Waiting feels like it should be a passive thing. When I hear the word waiting, I imagine an office worker sitting in a cubicle, praying for the minutes to tick by so he or she can go home. However, in my experience, waiting is actually a very active experience.

During the first year I knew my husband, I didn’t sit back and wait for him to notice me. We went on walks, wrote letters throughout the summer, and got to know each other as good friends. Our dating years and courtship was more of the same.

Adopting has been a whole different journey in waiting. You see, it could be really tempting for me to just sit back and wait for that phone call from our agency. It would be easy to say, “When I have a child then I can get involved with children’s ministry and hang out with other moms.”

Does that sound familiar to you? Have you ever said, “Lord, let me do _________ first, then I’ll serve You?” Well, you and I are in good company! Jesus talks about this very thing in the Parable of the Dinner found in Luke 14:16-20:

"But He said to him, “A man was giving a big dinner, and he invited many; and at the dinner hour he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come; for everything is ready now.’ “But they all alike began to make excuses. The first one said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of land and I need to go out and look at it; please consider me excused.’ Another one said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please consider me excused.’ Another one said, ‘I have married a wife, and for that reason I cannot come.’"

When invited, all the people had for this man was excuses. Because of their excuses, they missed out on a huge blessing. If I would have given into the temptation to passively wait, I would have missed out on three of the busiest, most rewarding years of my life.

So, what are you waiting for?