By Dr. Rebekah McCloud
Purple is my favorite color. When I was a teenager, the first things I bought with my first paycheck was a purple dress and purple shoes. My first car was purple. My room was purple, even now I have a purple comforter set for my bedroom. Two of my favorite books are Harold and the Purple Crayon and the Color Purple. One of my favorite poems is “Warning” by Jenny Joseph[1]. Let me share part of it with you.
“When I am an old
woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me…
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings…
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit…
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.”
I like her attitude. Why wait? Have you ever said, “I’ll do so and so when such and such happens”? Or have you said, “I’ll do so and so, tomorrow?” I have. My dad used to say, “today is the tomorrow that you talked about yesterday.” So, my question is, what are you waiting for? Many of us spend our lives wanting and waiting. Are we waiting in the right way for the right thing? What are we waiting for?
We are waiting for our ship to sail in. We are waiting for the perfect mate. We are waiting for our children to act right. We are waiting for things to happen on our job. We are waiting for… You fill in the blank. But, are we waiting in the right way for the right thing? What are we waiting for?
Psalm 27:14 tells us to, “Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” That my friends, is more than a notion. We live in a fast-paced world. We can send news around the globe at the blink of an eye. We drive fast, we talk fast, we eat fast. The idea that we have to wait sometimes rocks our world. We wait in line; we hate it. We wait in traffic; we hate it. We hate waiting for service, for the doctor, for the hairdresser, the barber, or our meal at a fast food place. We hate it.
The word wait means, “to remain or rest in expectation; to stay in one place until another catches up; to remain or be in readiness; or to remain temporarily neglected, unattended to, or postponed.”[2] The word wait appears 106 times in 101 verses in the King James Version of the Bible. The word waited appears 35 times, waiteth appears 11 times and waiting appears 8 times. Waiting must be important.
In Psalm 40:1 David said, “I waited patiently for the LORD; he turned to me and heard my cry.” Isaiah 64:4 says, “Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.”
So now my question is, are we waiting in the right way for the right thing? How can we wait for the Lord if we hate waiting and we spend our time waiting in the wrong way for the wrong things? Patience is the key to waiting, and waiting in the right way for the right thing. Romans 8:25 reminds us, that “If we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.”
The Bible says “I will wait for the God of my salvation… Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and our shield…the LORD waits to be gracious to you, heis good to those who wait for him…he is not slow to fulfill his promise, but is patient toward you…The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.”Amen.
As stewards, we have to ask ourselves, what are we waiting for? What’s preventing us from using our time, talent, money and resources for the furtherance of the kingdom? What are we waiting for? God is always at work. In ways seen and unseen, he’s on the JOB, working things out for our good. He allows us to “call those things which be not as though they were.” If we trust in him and wait on him, nothing will keep us from becoming the stewards he has called us to be. Amen.
Let me close with this familiar
scripture, Isaiah 40:31 says, “but those who hope in the LORD will renew their
strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow
weary, they will walk and not be faint.” What are you waiting for?
[1] Joseph, J. (1961). Warning at https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/warning
[2] The Free Dictionary at https://www.thefreedictionary.com/wait