Davalynn Spencer's Blog

Wait

By Davalynn Spencer @davalynnspencer

“No waiting on checkout aisle number three.”

I squeezed the red plastic handle of my shopping cart and held my ground. The frenzy around me resembled the Indy 500 at the drop of a green flag as shoppers rushed to be first in the new line so they didn’t have to … wait.

What is it about waiting that makes us so antsy?

Several years ago, I worked as a secretary for an agricultural chemical company in Northern Colorado. One morning a sales representative came into the office with his golden retriever. The man picked through the donut selection next to the coffee pot and laid one of the smooth, glazed pastries on the floor in front of his dog.

The retriever just sat there staring at the donut. He didn’t even sniff it.

“Why won’t he eat it?” I asked as saliva dripped from the dog’s clinched jaws.

“Because I haven’t told him to,” the salesman said.

To emphasize his point, he walked through the office and visited while the dog stared and drooled. At last he came back and quietly said, “Okay.”

The retriever inhaled the donut.

The salesman had trained his dog to eat only at his command. That way, he said, the dog could never be poisoned.

I wondered, does God do that with us?

Most often when He tells me to wait for something I want, I start drooling like the dog.

If He tells me to wait for His timing in a specific situation, I start revving my engine.

Does God want me to just stand there in the checkout line while the bag boy runs to get the can of green beans forgotten by the customer in front of me? Is there a character-building lesson going on?

Is there a reason for sitting with my foot on the brake at an eternally long traffic light? Other than safety?

Does God’s “wait” have a hidden motive behind it like the dog owner’s?

Perhaps waiting suppresses a me-first mentality, the I-want-it-now attitude. Maybe it jump-starts patience.

The word wait is verb, an action word. An intransitive* verb, but a verb nonetheless. It is not a do-nothing word and can serve as a command.

Psalm 37:7 directs us to “Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him.” This kind of wait encourages me to actively trust that God has a better grasp of the situation than I. It reminds me of the well-trained retriever.

I’m still progressing through the stages of Christian maturity and drooling over what I want. But I know the Lord has much greater things for me than a glazed donut. His timing is so much better than mine, and His command to wait has protected me from making so many poor—and dangerous—choices.

Thank God, I’m learning.

Wait is a verb.
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*In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb whose context does not include a direct object (a who or what).

At the top of her hill, Eli killed his lights and engine. From the glove compartment he retrieved a mag light and his .45, then pulled the keys from the ignition.

Instinctively he crouched and ran to the end of the house, then slid along the wall to the northwest corner. He stopped. Listened. Waited. A board squeaked. He crossed his wrists, gun in his right hand, light in his left. Raising them together, he clicked the light as he stepped around the end and shouted,

“Stop!”

The light caught the prowler’s legs as he dove off the porch, rolled to his feet, and ran for the road.

Eli followed him to the head of the drive, where he pointed his gun into the ground beyond the pasture corner post and fired. The report echoed through the hills and silenced the crickets.

He waited a second time. Listened for footfalls on gravel road. Stumbling, running through brush.

Tight-fisted, the darkness held its peace, giving up only a solitary heartbeat. His own.

He stuck his gun in the back of his jeans and returned to the front porch.

“Laura. It’s me.”

Two beats. Three. “Eli?”

“Yes.”

“Prove it.”

Good girl. “Laura Bell, you ding—” ~The Miracle Tree E-book and audio.

Inspirational Western Romance – where the hero is heroic.

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