What to Do When I Just Want to Eat the Marshmallow

What does “waiting” mean to you? When you hear that word, do you think of endless lectures from your parents, Christmas morning, or arbitrary speed limits posted in a school zone?

Waiting means something different to each and every one of us. Whether we’re waiting for a boy to notice us or for the alarm that wakes us, the tick-tock of the clock serves one very important purpose: It reminds us that we are not in control.

Have you ever prayed a prayer to God and felt like he just ignored you? The clock’s seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, and months ticked by, and that’s literally all you heard–the empty sound of a silent God? It’s frustrating to find yourself in a hurry to hear God’s voice only to discover that by your calculations, he’s painfully late.

Reading Lamentations tonight, I came across this verse: He has blocked my way with a high stone wall; he has made my road crooked. (3:9)

If I had stopped there, I might have been tempted to say, “Yeah, you tell ‘em, Jeremiah! Blame it on the big guy! I feel your pain.” But luckily, I didn’t. Lamentations 3:21-26 affirms, Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this: The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning. I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in him!” The Lord is good to those who depend on him, to those who search for him. So it is good to wait quietly for salvation from the Lord.

Waiting is hard, to be sure. When I read through these verses, though, I gain a new perspective on why we wait. Waiting definitely produces perseverance and character and hope and all those other wonderful qualities that I read about in the New Testament, but beyond that, my trust in God is strengthened. I like to see progress. I like change that can be measured. When I have an idea, I want to see immediate results. I have a hard time being patient with what God is doing in me. And unfortunately, he has a whole lot of work to do!

That last verse reminds me that the Lord is good to those who search for him. Searching can be frustrating. Searching takes time. Searching requires a map.

In the early 1970s, a famous professor from Stanford University conducted an experiment with four year- old children to test their ability to delay gratification. Each child was given a marshmallow; then the professor left the room and told the child not to eat the marshmallow. If she could wait until the professor returned, then the child could have two marshmallows. You can imagine a little four-year old sitting at the table staring at that lonely little marshmallow. How tempting to eat it! How sugary and delicious it looked! If she ate the marshmallow before the professor returned, then she would not get more marshmallows.

And so it is as we wait on God. He’s our professor. We can eat the marshmallow now. It’s tempting. After all, how do we know that we can trust him to do what he says and bring two marshmallows when he returns? That’s why we wait. We wait and we see. God shows up and we take note. We wait and we remember.

Remember the times when God showed up!

All that waiting is time spent building a track record of events that fill the gaps between the tick and the tock, between the “Will he?” and “Why isn’t he?” questions that dominate our prayer life.

Like a little child, God sometimes has to say to me: My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts….And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. (Isaiah 55:8). Those words are hard to swallow. They’re the equivalent of my mom chiding, “Because I said so, that’s why!” But I take comfort in knowing that By his mighty power at work within us, he is able to accomplish infinitely more than we would ever dare to ask or hope (Ephesians 3:20).

Yes, sometimes it seems like God places a stone wall on a crooked path. But I’m thankful for a God who knows better than I do what’s best for me. He can see over the wall and around the bends in the path. I can trust him because he has shown himself to me in times past.

Waiting is never easy, but when I think about what I can accomplish on my own, and what God can accomplish through me, I’m willing to wait.

Two marshmallows are always better than one.