More on Waiting

More on Waiting

In my last post I asked for responses to what might be good about waiting, having offered a few thoughts of my own. A day or two later my older (and wiser) brother wrote me an email with his thoughts. Some of them were quite personal, so I have edited them a bit. But I hope that what I am sharing with you here is a close approximation of what he wrote.

His overarching suggestion was that perhaps the ability to wait is a side-effect of a life of contentment. He wrote that he was reminded of Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Paul, who incidentally is writing “in chains,” says that he has “learned to be content whatever the circumstances.” I will have to look up that text in the original language sometime, just to satisfy my own curiosity. For now however, a quick look at dictionary.com tells me that content means “satisfied with what one is or has; not wanting more or anything else.”

Ok so I’m a failure at contentment, at least in certain areas. Maybe that’s why I hate waiting. And of course our culture feeds lack of contentment with the constant barrage of advertising encouraging us to be better, stronger, faster, prettier, etc. – now.

My brother used my father as his example of contentment. He is right. My dad rarely complains about anything. He takes what comes to him with gratitude and contentment like his own father did. Our grandfather was, according to my brother, the most contented man he had ever met. My brother remembered a time when he visited my grandfather in his retirement home. Home might be an exaggeration. It was (and now I am quoting my brother) a room with a bed, a chair, and a few personal belongings.  When asked how he was, grandpa said, with noticeable honesty and sincerity, that everything was good. He had a good chair and everything he needed.

I remember my grandfather’s contentment as well, although not that particular instance. And my brother’s recollection put my own lack of contentment in bold print.

So I think I might practice waiting—being a more patient driver; being more laid back about people who are habitually late; being more willing to say to the person in line “no you go first.” (I want you to know that my immediate family is wondering right now why they have the sudden urge to fall out of their chairs laughing.) I’m not sure what other sorts of waiting I might have to do but I have some guesses and I’m pretty sure I’m not going to like it. But it seems a fair way to start moving toward the contentment that Paul talks about. And as my brother pointed out, contentment leads to the peace that passes all understanding, not just about salvation, but peace with God in all areas of my life, no matter the circumstances. That is a worthwhile goal to strive after. Thanks Carl!

Waiting

For the past several months I have been trying to read through the psalms about every 4-6 weeks. I enjoy it and am surprised at how often I come across unfamiliar psalms, as well as familiar psalms that speak to me in entirely new ways.

Today as I was reading, Psalm 27:14 hit me between the eyes. It reads, “Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.” I meditated on the verse for several minutes to let it sink in. You see, I’m a lousy waiter. I hate waiting in line. I hate waiting at traffic lights. I get wildely impatient when meetings don’t start on time. I am crabby when someone says they will meet me at a particular time and then shows up 15 minutes late. I could go on with my confession but I think you get the picture.

And although these examples of waiting might not be your pet peeves, it strikes me that 21^st century Americans are not very good at waiting in general. We are instant gratification people, aren’t we? Fast food, fast cars, fast internet connections, fast phones….the faster the better. Waiting for an internet page to load in 13 seconds rather than 2 drives some people crazy.

Isn’t the psalmist’s command in some ways completely at odds with how we live? Wait.

And of course this is not the only such command in Scripture. It actually appears a number of times in the psalms, as well as in God’s commands to his people in various stories. One text even says it is good to wait for the salvation of the LORD(Lam. 3:26).

Good to wait??? What’s so good about waiting? I’m not really sure, but here are a few thoughts. Maybe waiting reminds us that we are not in control, we only think we are. Obviously, if I could be at the front of the line I would. But I am not in control so I have to wait. And the same is true with my relationship with God. Sometimes God’s answer to my prayer is not yes or no, but wait. I’m not always so keen on that, but hindsight being what it is, that answer has often been the case in my experience.

Furthermore, maybe waiting reminds me that I am not the center of the universe. There are other people whose schedule is just as important as mine. My need to get home or to a meeting or whatever is not inherently more important than the need of the person ahead of me. Thus, when the next line over opens at the grocery store, running over without regard to the person just in front of me who has also been waiting is not demonstrating love for neighbor.

I feel  a bit like I’m grasping at straws, however. I don’t like to wait and coming up with reasons why waiting is good really doesn’t help much. But in the rush of every day life, there seems to be something deeply important about learning to slow down, and even to wait. And given that waiting is frequently commanded by God only enhances this feeling. So what do you think? What is good about waiting?

The Plains

For those of you who read regularly, I’m sorry for the lack of posts lately. We were on vacation. I did some reflecting, but no posting. In fact, I actively avoided technology in general. But that is another story. I will be posting some of my musing from our trip over the next few weeks. Thanks for your patience.

We drove 16 hours today. Much of it was across the plains states. And yes, we chose to do this during the day.

When I talk about driving across Iowa or Nebraska, something we have done numerous times, any number of people have said to me something along the lines of “oooh, those states are soooooo boring!” I usually offer some objection to their assessments, but to no avail. I thought about those comments again today and wondered whether those people have ever paid attention to the landscape they are hurrying through. Or better yet, whether they had ever bothered to get off Interstate 80 for a slower and closer perspective.

Take Iowa. The rolling farmland, deep valleys, the miles of crops that feed our families and so many more…..it is beautiful. I never tire of driving up and down those hills, seeing the silos grouped together like monuments marking out the family farms.

 I remember the nights spent on the farms of my uncles and aunts, some of the most hospitable people you will ever meet. It was so dark at night that I could hardly see my hand in front of my face as I lay in bed. And I was scared. But my aunt would bring me a nightlight if my sister was not with me, so I wouldn’t be afraid. And my older cousins would help me catch fireflies while our parents chatted and sipped sweet iced tea in the warm, humid summer evenings. Wonderful people. Wonderful land.

And of course, I can’t imagine a bigger sky than Nebraska. The horizon stretches out endlessly. The sun begins to color the summer sky pink at 9:30 and there are still traces of pink and yellow and orange an hour and a half later. And once it finally gets dark, there are more stars than you knew existed…so close you feel like you can touch them. Its almost impossible to go to bed because it is so beautiful.

While mountains and oceans tend to get more press, it turns out that the Iowa cornfields and the Nebraska sky, not to mention the sandhills, grasses, lakes, rivers, etc., of the plains all proclaim the glory of God as much as those parts of God’s world that are often considered more spectacular….if only people will take time to notice.

Who Is Like God?

Who is like God? Interesting question, isn’t it?

The writer of Psalm 113 asks the question. The name Michael is the Hebrew form of the question. So what do we do with this question?

At one level, the obvious answer is no one. No one is like God. Scripture seems to emphasize that over and over again. God says to Job, “Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place?” The psalms praise the God who stretches out the heavens, wraps himself in light, and redeems his people, all  things we cannot do. And God says to Isaiah, “my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.”

And yet, at another level, every human person is like God in some way. Genesis 1 tells us that human persons are made in the image of God. Part of the irony of the snake’s temptation in Genesis 3 is that he tells the woman that if she eats of the fruit she will be like God. The first couple doesn’t seem to realize that they, unlike any other creature, are already like God, made a little lower than the heavenly beings.

A substantial part of the human predicament since the original rebellion against God has been remembering our place – remembering who we are and who God is. Humans have a tendency to either think too little of themselves, or too much of themselves.

We are not, as some would have us believe, mere creatures, on par with every other creature on earth. But nor are we little gods, knowing what is best for us and those around us. We are not the sculptors of our own destiny nor can we begin to fathom the mind of God.

When circumstances are not going the way we had hoped or we are faced with huge disappointments, we might be tempted to say, I can’t believe God would do _______ (you fill in the blank). That thought, however, should always be tempered with the question, “who is like God?” As high as the heavens are above the earth, so are God’s ways higher than our ways and his thoughts higher than ours.

Rodent Rage

I like to garden. I especially like my vegetable garden because I get a tangible payoff – lettuce, beans, tomatoes, etc.

I had given up gardening for a few years in part, because it takes a fair amount of time and time was something I lacked; in part, because we had a groundhog family that seemed intent on eating everything that I planted down to the ground. No matter how beautiful the garden looked and how healthy the plants were, just about the time I could imagine the first beans coming on, that nasty rodent and his extended family would eat my carefully tended plants down to their stems.

But a couple years ago I decided to give it a try again. After all, I hadn’t seen a groundhog in a long time – at least not in my yard – and I really love gardening. Last summer was one of the best gardens I have had in a long time. And this year looked even more promising. Until today.

I walked out to my garden after work to check on my beans, hoping there might be enough there for my husband and I to enjoy with our dinner. But to my horror, three of my six rows of beans were visibly munched on by some ravenous rodent. And those that were not munched on were flattened.

Visions of shotguns danced in my head. I considered dousing myself in mosquito spray and standing vigil near my garden all night, gun in hand, ready to eliminate any furry intruder. Of course I knew I was as likely to shoot myself in the foot as kill the invading varmint, but that seemed a small price to pay.

Once my husband got home and calmed me down he assured me he would find a way to foil the fiend. And I realized that all my ranting, as usual, had done me no good at all.

And that made me realize that gardening is a life lesson of sorts. It takes patience, work, and care but in the end, the results are largely out of my control. How often hasn’t my life been like that? And how often haven’t I ranted, furious that things hadn’t turned out my way?

So what if instead of ranting, I tried to figure out what God would like me to learn from the experience? That would probably be a good place to start. Currently, I’m thinking that maybe God wants me to learn to improve my aim…….

God and My Children

One of the hardest parts of parenting is learning to let go. If you happen to be someone who prides herself on taking good care of the people she loves, maybe even to the point of micromanaging at times, this is even more difficult. The older my children got, the more I realized I was not in control. And I was not always keen on that.

Oh don’t get me wrong. When things were going well—when their friends were nice, they made the team, they were doing well in school, etc.—I didn’t really have a problem. But when things went wrong, when life was not turning out the way they had hoped, planned, and worked for, then I didn’t do so well. I wanted to help. I wanted to fix things.

Last year one of my children had an especially bad experience. This experience left my child emotionally crushed. Some of the behavior that followed worried me. Some of what the child said worried me. And there was nothing I could do other than be there for her.....and worry. But at one point, when I was feeling very low and very anxious, a dear friend of mine said to me, “God loves your children even more than you do.”

God loves your children even more then you do.  I had to let that sink in a bit.

God loves my children even more than I do.

Well of course he does, I thought. But what does that mean?

It means he knows them better than me. He knows what is best for them. It means I need to trust him. If I couldn’t trust the one who had created this child, the one who had formed this child in my womb, the one who had given this child to our family, who could I trust?

So now, as I continue to let go, as I continue to try to figure out how to be a good mom as my children leave, as I worry about what might lie ahead, I hear my friend reassure me:

“God loves your children even more than you do.”

Ps. 139:14-18

Unlearning

I read a peculiar thing a short time ago. An author wrote that he and his wife are raising their children in such a way that their children have as little as possible to “unlearn” later in life. As someone who has raised three children, that seemed like a very peculiar statement.

In some ways, it is arrogant. If you raise your children such that they have little to unlearn, I guess you think you are getting it all right the first time. That’s quite a thing to say.

In other ways, its rather ridiculous. Learning, after all, is a constant process of unlearning, integrating, and re-learning. In part, it is putting away old ideas, and assimilating new ideas. It is actually quite a natural part of development, I am told.

But I also know that unlearning is natural from experience—my own and that of my children. Learning is part of what I do for a living. And learning is not just piling more ideas onto already solidified ideas. It is reevaluating previously learned ideas in light of new evidence or experience or information. Sometimes that reevaluation leads to rejecting or changing an old idea. Sometimes it leads to rejecting the new idea. But adaptation, whether to new physical circumstances or to new ideas, nearly always involves a certain amount of “unlearning.”

So unlike this popular author, I raised my kids with plenty of new situations and ideas to evaluate. I guided their thinking about what sorts of ideas were foundational, and what sorts of ideas were negotiable. I talked to them when they had questions—any questions—and helped them sort through their options pointing out potential strengths and weaknesses.

I let them know that while there are a lot of things we don’t know, there are plenty of things we do know. Some of those things might need adaptation or unlearning at some point down the road. But some things won’t.

I let them know they should not be afraid to “unlearn” things if the “unlearning” brings them closer to the truth of the matter. Admitting you have been wrong is an ingrained part of being a Christian, after all. And I can’t tell you how many times I had to admit I was wrong in my parenting career. I had to model unlearning, much to my chagrin at times.

Perhaps the most important model of unlearning is sanctification. I constantly must unlearn old habits and learn new ways to live if I want to conform more and more to the image of Christ. The old me must die daily. The new me—the united with Christ me—must come to life more and more each day.

So unlearning is part of the rhythm of the Christian life. And therefore one of the best habits you can teach your children.