What’s the Rush?
“Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD. Psalm 27:14
There was a popular song recorded several years ago by the musical group Alabama that went like this: “I’m in a hurry to get things done. I rush and rush until life’s no fun. All I really have to do is live and die. I’m in a hurry and don’t know why.” Does that not fit our day and age? Why is it we get in such an “all-fired hurry” to get things accomplished, and then, at the end of the day, we feel like all we did was “spin our wheels”? We accomplished very little of substance because we had too many “irons in the fire”, that is, too much multitasking. How many times do we undertake a project without praying about it first? There are situations that arise that give us no time to pray, and we just respond instinctively. That’s why it is always a good idea to “prayed up” beforehand.
There are several accounts in scripture where men and women did not want to wait on the Lord before embarking on His plan for their lives. Abraham and Sarah come to mind. God had promised them a son, a biological son from both of them, even though they were getting on up in age. Sarah got in a hurry because she doubted God. I suppose she figured she wasn’t getting any younger, and if she was going to have a baby, it should be soon. Since it had not yet happened, she sent her handmaid Hagar to bear Abraham’s child. Hagar did have a son, but he was not the son of promise. After Ishmael was born to Hagar, the two women had no use for each other, sort of a foretelling of the future of Israel and the Arab states. Later Sarah did have the son that God promised, but the two nations who descended from Isaac and Ishmael are still suffering because Sarah took matters into her own hands due to the fact that she couldn’t wait on the Lord (Genesis 16).
If we want the best outcome for the plans we make, we need to wait on the Lord. He just may have something better in mind for us. Waiting can be difficult. We live in a world of instant everything. If an on-line download takes more than a few seconds, we get impatient. Patience is one of the fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23), and the best way to learn patience is through trials that force us to wait. It takes courage to wait, but the reward is a more mature and a stronger heart, an endurance to persevere, and a building up of faith and trust in the only One who is completely trustworthy.
If we are anxious, perhaps we should check our schedules and our “to do” lists. Did we carve out some time to be quiet, study God’s word, pray, and meditate. If we do that, God can make the rest of our day go a lot more smoothly It’s all a matter of priority.