Yes, I’m back to the subject of waiting because it’s one I struggle with. If I do, it stands to reason some of you probably struggle with waiting too.
As many of you know from previous blogs my husband and I are waiting on the sale of our house to go through, so we can purchase another home in a different area closer to family and to the church where we believe God is calling us.
This week we recovered a phone call to say our buyer has applied for a first home buyer’s grant which has held the sale up a bit. However the sale is ‘still progressing,’ the real estate agent assured us. The next morning in my daily reading from Streams in the Desert, these lines from the last verse of a poem encouraged me.
“BE STILL” – a deeper step in faith and rest.
“Be still and know” Thy Father knoweth best
The way to lead His child to that fair land,
A “summer” land where quiet waters flow;
I smiled as I thought how aptly that described the place to which we’re moving. I shared the verse with my husband. We both praised God that this situation is all in His hands and for how He encouraged us with the poem.
Meanwhile we returned to trying to make the best use of our time here. For me, that meant as well as writing these blogs, revising and readying poetry and short stories for submission to various magazines, working on my verse novel for young people, starting a new poem, and preparations for a workshop I’m running soon, plus reading and commenting on another writer’s E book due to be released next week. For my husband, it meant going back to several time consuming projects he has been busy with. Both of us have been trying to use the waiting time productively, so that when the call comes to say contracts have been exchanged, we will be ready to go and look for the house God has for us.
Even so, the thought of getting that phone call is never far from our minds. Every time the phone rings (which is not that often since we no longer have a teenager living at home) we’re both prone to dive on it eagerly. Each time it is not the call we want, we have to train our minds to get back to the jobs at hand and use the waiting time productively.
On Wednesday, a call told us the valuer would be out early Thursday morning. Hope leapt in our chests – one step closer to contract exchange. After the real estate agent and valuer left, we continued with the tasks we had set ourselves.
Today, I dived on the phone, sure (or hoping) this was the call we’ve been waiting for. Instead, it was about a writing course for young people I’m running during the school holidays. Since then, silence has reigned, if you discount the whine of the lawn mower and drone of the blower vacuum picking up autumn leaves.
Disappointment could have stopped us in its tracks. We chose not to let it. Or to let daydreams about our move and our new house interfere. Instead we are both back using the time to do the jobs that God has given us to do.
What about you, when you are waiting for God to answer a prayer? Do you fritter time away? Or get on with the tasks at hand until the prayer is answered? Do you praise Him at each step of the way that this is all in His hands? That’s the way to use waiting time productively.
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Waiting Prayerfully