Council Bluffs SDA Church

Midweek thoughts

The waiting game.  None of us likes to wait.  Waiting is so hard, and it seems like what we are waiting for will never arrive.  It could be we are waiting for a package, waiting to hear if we got the job, waiting for our prayer to be answered, or even waiting for Jesus to return.  Waiting is difficult for us humans.  Many times, we try to do things to make whatever it is we are waiting for to arrive sooner.  What we don’t realize is our attention has been diverted.  Our attention is not where it should be.

I was reminded of this today.  While working this morning I had difficulties with the websites I was using for my job.  They were running so slow, and I was having to wait for the pages to load each time causing me to slow down and not be able to get things done as quickly as I usually do.  What did I do?  I got frustrated.  I let myself get irritated that I couldn’t get the work done like I wanted to.  My mind drifted into nothing but frustration. 

This afternoon, my husband and I decided to take a bit of a drive, get something to eat, and then take a walk.  It would take us a bit to get to where we wanted to eat so we took our Sabbath School lesson with us.  I read it while my husband drove.  The lesson for this past Sunday spoke to me.  It was about the God of patience.  In the last paragraph, the author, Gavin Anthony, wrote “We can focus on the things that we are waiting for, or we can focus on the One who holds those things in His hands”. 

I realized that my focus was on the wrong thing.  Letting myself get frustrated did no good and changed nothing.  Instead of being frustrated, I should have just calmly given it over to God and trusted that He would see it through.  His time, His way.  God knows what is best for us and He knows far more than we ever will. 

The next time we find ourselves waiting, no matter what it is for, we need to remember to keep our focus on Him and trust that He will see it through in His time.  After all, God’s timing is perfect.