Well, yes… that’s what the Holy Spirit placed in my mind that early afternoon, last week, while stuck on a plane, in the middle of the Pittsburgh airport’s runway, waiting to take off to meet my niece and sister in NYC… “it is in the waiting that we find the gift.”
I think it is not necessarily the actual period of time that we get to spend waiting what the true gift is… but, rather, that the wait is the packaging where the gift comes wrapped in.
As it is easily inferred from my writings, I allow my thoughts to run wild, once in a while, to the point of causing unnecessary stress and uncontrolled anxiety. Therefore, waiting for me usually becomes life-threatening… particularly if I leave my mild idle. Waiting for that delayed flight to NYC last week was a good example. During that time, I realized that the best thing for my sanity and that of those around me, is for me to keep my mind occupied whenever I am faced with having to wait.
Knowing that about myself, I happened to grab a book on my way out of the house which I had started earlier this year and had to put down because I was so busy I couldn’t finish it. Well, guess what, the delay on my flight gave me the perfecto opportunity to get caught up on my reading of that book. As God would have it, the chapter I picked it up at was on the topic of… wait… wait for it… yes, it was on the topic of waiting, of course!
The Lord has a way of speaking to me in a loving, caring and sometimes, VERY clear way – this was one of those times.
The thoughts on waiting paired up with an actual wait, topped by a book with a chapter on waiting… c’mon… even I could not miss that message…
Anyway, how often God puts us in a position where we have nothing to do but wait? In my case, rather than taking the waiting time as an opportunity to discern what God wants me to learn, I have wasted many of those moments fretting, panicking or being upset. Waiting for test results has, over the last few years, been a re-occurring example of such a waste. Hands sweating, body shaking, back aching as I wait for the telephone to ring… until, one day, the Holy Spirit led me to the Word. In one of those occasions, I picked up my Bible and began to read through the Psalms, starting with #1. Ever since that day, that has become my ritual every time I have to wait for test results.
Covering up the icy-cold rooms of anxiety and fear with the warm blanket of the Word as I wait has helped me, in those moments, to refocus by taking away my eyes from the circumstances to center them on Jesus. The key is to always do that…to always be able to re-direct my sight towards the One who is Hope so I can unwrap the gift that comes to me neatly packed in the wait…like for instance, these meditations I was able to jot down while waiting for the airplane to depart.
Sigh…
Therefore, though I might not totally agree with the author of the book I was reading when she pointed out that the waiting is the gift… I do agree with the idea that waiting might just be the packaging where the gift is packed in. The time we wait should be then, used to unwrap it so we can enjoy it! Simple, huh?
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