2013-12-04 - Learn to Wait

As a headstrong and impatient little girl, I just couldn’t wait to eat a piece of my chocolate bunny, the morning after Easter. If you can imagine a knife with an eight-inch blade in the hands of a 5-year old child in the kitchen, at about 6 a.m.. you can also imagine my sleeping mother’s horror, when I soon approached her for help. It seems the knife slipped on the surface of the refrigerated Russell Stover(tm) bunny, and my index finger on my right hand was bleeding. Now you couldn’t tell how upset my Mom was in the moment, for she quickly arose and tended to my hand with the calmness of an ER nurse. Afterward, however, she read me the riot act on doing something like that without asking for help “first,” before going back downstairs to make some coffee and have a cigarette. My impatience had caused a difficult start to her day.

I wonder how it is for God when we are so impatient, and just go off half-cocked and end up hurting ourselves. We can do it physically or emotionally, and clearly spiritually, when we don’t fully rely on him and wait to get help with things beyond ourselves. Yes, we need to do our part and let him do his, yet sometimes the lines on that get blurred, and we get hurt. He doesn’t react to our ridiculousness by flippantly scolding us, even when we deserve it. He still helps us, when we finally ask for him to get the “bleeding stopped”. There are often consequences for our waiting so long to go to him, but he still doesn’t throw it in our faces. When we ask and we are repentant, he easily forgives us. What a blessing!!! I would like to feel freer to pray for the strength to know when to ask for help sooner, rather than later. That would be a blessing, too. What will you do when you need help?

“But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31 KJV)

“For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth.” (Ps 37:9 KJV)

“For I will not trust in my bow, neither shall my sword save me.” (Ps 44:6 KJV)

“In God I will praise his word, in God I have put my trust; I will not fear what flesh can do unto me.” (Ps 56:4 KJV)

““Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.”(Luke 22:42 KJV)

"your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”(Matt 6:1 KJV)

Deborah Durrett

cfpraydeb@gmail.com
http://www.cfdevotionals.org