Learning to Wait

What are we to think when God witholds His answer to one of our prayers? We no doubt wonder. As creatures stuck within time, we can find those seconds ticking by to be very frustrating. Seems like there's never enough time. But then sometimes it's like we've got too much time on our hands. Time is a peculiar things, don't you think? Look at our pets. They don't know time. Think about babies. They don't know time either. Time is something that applies only to us adult people. And the difficulty lies when we try to bring God down into our little lives of time that we've created. He is totally other than time. He stands outside time.

It's important for us to understand that God doesn't just see us in the here and now. He perceives the big picture all at one time ... where we've been, where we are, and where we are going. And He knows how every little decision, action, or blessing will impact our lives.

Do we think God wants to bring something into our lives that would absolutely destroy us? Of course not! He knows that what could be a tremendous blessing for us later on could completely wreck our lives right now. For this reason, though He hears our prayers, He will often pause to give us time to prepare for that blessing.

Learning to wait on God demands at least three things of us. First, we must be sensitive to Him. That is, we must nurture our rrelationship with the Father so we can hear Him when He says "Wait." Second, we must trust His judgment. Does God know more than we know? Yes, of course He does. Then we should trust Him. Third, we must be obedient to Him. If we try to make something happen on our own after God has said to wait, then we're headed toward disaster. God blesses obedience ... even obedient waiting.

God doesn't operate in a vacuum; He works within His relationship with each of us. We mustn't forget that He's actively walking with us, even when He withholds an answer to our prayers. It doesn't mean He's not there; it means He's looking out for us all the time. And the answers will come ... when they're ready.

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Well, I finally got to the end of the blogs I had written ahead of time. I thought I was never going to run out of them. Of course, that was my plan when I wrote them. But now they're all gone and that means I get to take a couple weeks off and rest. Like this is such hard work! LOL. But I will take the days off and see what it feels like not to have a blog hanging over my head every morning. I will be back Feb. 18th with all new material. I have enough written ahead of time to keep me busy for quite awhile. It only works for me to write ahead of time because I'd never be able to just sit down and write. I have to have something already written so I spend entire afternoons writing blog material. I'm not sure yet how I'm going to break it up into daily segments but I'll figure that out when I get to it, I guess. And I'll be back to being stumped for what to name each blog. If worse comes to worse I'll just take the first three words of the first sentence and go with that. Not really titles, but something to differentiate between them.

We are fogged in this morning although as I write this the sun is trying to burn through the haze. We don't get many foggy days up here in the foothills, praise God. Having been raised down in the Valley, I've already had enough fog to last me a lifetime. I don't need to experience any more. We got about .87 of an inch of rain last night. A nice soaking rain. That's what brought on the fog. All that moisture in the air.

Well, I'm excited about taking a break from blogging but have no idea what I'll do with the extra time. We were going to go do our shopping today but I couldn't borrow a car until Saturday so we'll go tomorrow instead. I don't want to take my car because of the noise it is making. I'm sure it's the brakes because it only makes that grinding sound when I press on the brake peddle. Sometime next week we'll see what we can do to fix the problem. We've got a little money stuck aside and I just have to pray that it's enough for a brake job. That won't fix the problem with the front end but we can't very well drive around a car that makes all that noise. I'm afraid one of these times I will put my foot on the brake and nothing will happen. Can't have that!

So we will go do our shopping tomorrow. That's always exhausting. What really gets to me is all the stopping and starting. WalMart, Dollar Tree, Longs, Costless, Rayleys, and then home. I wish there were somewhere where we could just park the car and walk to all the different places we need to go. But these old gold rush towns were all built as strip towns. You start at one and and progress to the other end and then you can go home. Oh I hope there is cat litter at WalMart tomorrow. I need cat litter desperately. The last couple times we've gone to WalMart they've been out of the litter I like and can afford. Who would have ever guessed that litter would get so expensive? Not me!

No plans for today except to go out and get dinner when it's time. Michael said last night that he wanted to have Subway sandwiches and since we haven't splurged in months and months I decided we'd buy them for dinner. Their sandwiches are kind of hard for me to eat but I can suffer once in awhile. Or I could do like I've done sometimes and order Michael a sandwich and then go next door and order me some Chinese rice or chow mein (not too sure on that spelling). It's about the same price for either one. Just looked outside and the fog is almost all gone. I knew that sun was going to burn through rapidly once it decided to get serious. And it looks pretty serious out there now.

Sunday's going to be the big day for me. Communion Sunday at church in the morning, Super Bowl in the afternoon, and my birthday all day long! Yippee!!! What a full day we have planned for Sunday. Of course the entire nation will be celebrating Super Bowl. I guess I could say they are all celebrating my birthday but it wouldn't be the truth. Besides I don't think I have that many friends. No, I know I don't have that many friends.

Well, I guess I'll end this email and officially start my vacation. If memory serves me correctly, I've been writing blogs every morning for 7 months now. It's time for a break. I think I'm going to enjoy this. Only thing is, I'll probably be ready to come back to blogging in a matter of days. That's what happened the last time I tried to take a break. That time I think it lasted, what? two days? three? I think it was two. I think I'll do better this time. Okay, this is it. See you again on February 18th, or there abouts. I plan for the 18th but we'll need to see how things work out by then. Take care, stay close to the Lord, and I'll see you in about two, two and a half weeks. Bye!
P.S. Well, my spell checker still isn't working this morning so you'll have to over look any typos and misspellings. That's twice now that it hasn't worked. Boo!