waiting – Michele Huey

Your Father knows exactly what you need even before you ask him. — Matthew 6:8 NIV

My husband came home one Friday evening with a disgusted look on his face.

“My truck is not to be moved,” he announced.

I looked out the door and noted the hood of his green pickup ajar. I was almost afraid to ask why.

A section of the fuel line was leaking, and until he replaced it, the truck couldn’t be used. So he went to the auto parts store in town. Just as our luck would have it, the part had to be ordered from the manufacturer, and we’d have to contact a local dealer in another town forty-five minutes away to order it for us.

“The part will be in on Wednesday,” he announced Saturday morning after a couple of phone calls. “Can you pick it up for me?”

Wednesday I called to make sure the part was in. It wasn’t. Neither was it in on Thursday. Or Friday. Monday I called the dealer for the fourth time.

“We ordered it, Ma’am,” he said. “We just didn’t get it yet. We don’t know where it is. The manufacturer said they shipped it. I’m going to put in another order and have them ship it so I have it tomorrow.”

“Why don’t we just forget it?” I said when I called the next day and it still wasn’t in. “I could have been to Detroit and back and gotten it myself.”

“Would you wait one more day?” he asked. He sounded as frustrated as I felt. “I’m going to call the manufacturer and find out where it is.”

“Okay,” I agreed, but not without a sigh.

The next day, even though the part we needed was put on the delivery truck at four o’clock that morning, it still wasn’t in. So what do we do now? It had been ten days since we ordered the part, and it was lost somewhere between Detroit and western Pennsylvania. If we ordered it from another dealer, we’d probably have to wait another week before it came in there. And what if the part came in the first place the day after we ordered it from someone else?

Finally, on Thursday, seven days after it was to be in, the elusive order arrived. One look at my husband’s face when he saw it, though, and I knew: After all that, it was the wrong part.

I got to thinking, though: We’re such an “instant-minded” society. Aren’t we like that with God, too?

We put in our orders with our heavenly Father, thinking that prayer is like putting our money in a vending machine, pushing a button, and having our answer drop down out of heaven like a candy bar. But more often than not, we have to wait, and waiting is the hardest part. Sometimes we wait so long, we think God is ignoring us or punishing us.

But when the answer does come, it’s always exactly what we need and right on time. And what’s even better—He never sends the wrong part.

Father, I am so impatient. Help me to be persistent and patient in prayer. Amen.

Read and meditate on Matthew 7:7–11.

Awake, O Lord! Why do you sleep? –Psalm 44:23 NIV

A man checked into a hotel room and was told to be as quiet as possible because the guest in the next room was a light sleeper. As he pulled off his shoes, he accidentally dropped one on the floor, making a loud thunk! He carefully slipped off the other shoe and crawled into bed. An hour later, he was awakened by someone pounding on the wall and a shout from the light sleeper next door: “For heavens sake, drop the other shoe!”

Have you ever waited for the other shoe to drop? “Trouble comes in threes,” you’ve heard, and you’ve already been slammed with two. “What else could go wrong?” you ask, but don’t really want to know. So you spend your days and nights anxiously waiting for the other shoe to drop.

A Facebook friend, suffering from shingles and enduring cortisone shots, said that she “felt the question hovering over me, looking for a place to land.”

Been there? Done that? Haven’t we all.

In times like these, we wonder where God is. We’ve prayed and prayed and prayed, yet not even a whisper of an answer comes from heaven. Not even a “Wait.” God is silent, and we don’t know why.

Psalm 44 addresses this scenario. The psalmist goes from feeling blessed to abandoned, and he doesn’t think it’s fair.

While in the context of this psalm, he’s speaking for the nation of Israel, we, as individuals, can identify with the situation and his feelings: “You blessed us” (vv. 1–8). “You abandoned us” (vv. 9–16). “It isn’t fair because we didn’t do anything wrong” (vv. 17–22).

Like the psalmist, we have a choice. We can stay in our pit of self-pity, feeling betrayed, rejected, and abandoned, or we can accept God’s sovereignty and, like the psalmist, still pray, “Help me!” (vv. 23–26).

My Facebook friend chose not to wait for the other shoe to drop, but “to live by faith not fear.”

When read this psalm in my Quiet Time Bible one morning, I was challenged to “ask God to help you to understand His ways and grant you His peace when you are waiting for His voice.”

How can I ask Him for understanding, when my finite mind cannot wrap around God and His ways? As A. W. Tozer wrote, “God in His person and attributes fills heaven and earth exactly as the ocean fills a bucket which is submerged in its depths.”

But, even though I cannot even begin to understand—am I supposed to?—I trust that He has a plan and a purpose for my pain. I do not pray for patience as I wait for His answer. Instead, I pray for strength for the wait and His grace to sustain me as I wait.

He hears. He will answer. Of that I have no doubt—even when the other shoe drops.

In the morning, O Lord, You hear my voice. In the morning I lay my requests before You and wait in expectation (Psalm 5:3). Thank You for the hope I have in You. Blessed assurance! Amen.

Read and reflect on Psalm 44.

Michele Huey

Tag: waiting

The Wrong Part

The Other Shoe

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