Still Waiting
by Linda Rex
Once one of my friends showed me a picture of Moses and the parting of the Red Sea. On one side of the towering walls of water between which the thousands of Israelites were fleeing the Egyptians was a man in a boat. He had a fishing pole in his hand which was bent under the strain of having a large fish on the hook. The only problem was that the fish with the hook in its mouth was on the other side of the great chasm!
How often in life we are caught in a predicament like the fisherman who was out of his league. Or the Israelites who froze in fear when the Egyptians caught them with their backs to the Red Sea with nowhere else to go. But God’s word to the Israelite nation then are his same words to us today: “The LORD will fight for you while you keep silent.” (Ex. 14:14). All God wants from us is for us to trust him in the midst of our predicament.
The problem is the “keep silent” part—the “be still” part of the whole thing can make us really anxious. It’s counter-intuitive to do nothing in the face of a real problem but sit still and keep silent. And that makes us very uncomfortable, especially if we are one of those Type A personality people who likes to “get ‘er done!” It’s the waiting that kills us.
But the waiting in silence is the key to the whole process. This is because God is a whole lot more concerned about what we learn from the whole experience and how we grow in our faith and love for him than he is about rescuing us immediately from our struggles. It is in the silence and in the waiting that we begin to see the situation more clearly. We begin to hear the Holy Spirit’s calming whisper and encouragement. We find that the Lord does have an answer for us in the midst of the chaos. It may be just as simple as, “Hang on!”
The spiritual disciplines of silence and stillness are important for Christians to practice regularly. In silence and stillness, we open ourselves to hear what God has to say to us and we make ourselves available to God for his Spirit to give us guidance, encouragement, correction and hope.
Many times in the midst of the quietness we are amazed to find the answer come to us in a complete and clear way we would never have thought of on our own. Or we may get that phone call we’ve been waiting on and fretting about. God often moves powerfully when we determine to be still and just trust him. Waiting patiently for God in silence and stillness is worth the effort.
Lord, thank you that we can turn to you in the midst of our predicaments and wait in silence and stillness for you to act on our behalf. Grant us the grace to trust you and wait on you patiently when we are in need or in trouble. Amen.
“Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him;…” Psalm 37:7
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