Waiting

We entered a season of waiting over a year ago and have watched as prayers have been answered and our lives so blessed by our two newest children. God has truly been Good to us! The waiting continues as we fall in love with a little sweet baby in our care and wait once more for God's plan to be unveiled to us. Waiting is hard. Harder still to know that God's plan may not be the plan that our hearts desire. He could very well ask us to let go of that which we have grown to love so much and in the dark of night we question, ponder, and wrestle in the spirit. We confess our fleshly weakness and pray for clean hearts, hearts that seek God more than our own will. Hearts willing to surrender to Him. What I liked about this poem is its reflection on my own experience. I have learned more about who God is in the last year than in the previous ten. While I still don't understand prayer, I prayer fervently and have felt the result of a deepening relationship. God uses everything, including and maybe especially waiting to His glory! Waiting On The Lord Desperately, helplessly, longingly, I cried. Quietly, patiently, lovingly God replied. I pled and I wept for a clue to my fate, And the Master so gently said, “Child, you must wait!” “Wait?’, you say, wait!” my indignant relpy. “Lord, I need answers, I need to know why! Is your hand shortened? Or have you not heard? By FAITH I have asked, and am claiming your word.” “ My future and all to which I can relate Hangs in the balance, and you tell me to WAIT? I’m needing a ‘yes,’ a go-ahead sign, Or even a ‘no’ to which I can resign.” “And Lord, you promised that if we believe We need but to ask, and we shall receive. And Lord, I’ve been asking, and this is my cry: I’m weary of asking! I need a reply!” Then quietly, softly, I learned of my fate As my Master replied once again, “You must wait.” So, I slumped in my chair, defeated and taut And grumbled to God, “So, I’m waiting. . . for what?” He seemed then to kneel and His eyes wept with mine, And he tenderly said, “I could give you a sign. I could shake the heavens, and darken the sun. I could raise the dead, and cause mountians to run. All you seek, I could give, and pleased you would be. You would have what you want . . but, you wouldn’t know ME.” “You’d not know the depth of my love for each saint; You’d not know the power that I give to the faint; You’d not learn to see through the clouds of despair; You’d not learn to trust just by knowing I’m there; You’d not know the joy of resting in me When darkness and silence were all you could see. “You’d never experience that fulness of love As the peace of my Spirit descends like a dove; You’d know that I give and I save . . . (for a start), But you’d not know the depth of the beat of my heart.” “The glow of my comfort late into the night. The faith that I give when you walk without sight, The depth that’s beyond getting just what you asked Of an infinite God, who makes what you have LAST.” “You’d never know, should your pain quickly flee, What it means that ‘My grace is sufficient for thee.’ Yes, your dreams for your loves ones overnight would come true, But, oh, the loss! If I lost what I’m doing in you!” “So, be silent, my child, and in time you will see THAT THE GREATEST OF GIFTS IS TO GET TO KNOW ME, And though oft may my answers is still but to WAIT.” “And though oft’ My answers seem terribly late, My most precious answer of all is still, “Wait.” ~Russell Kelfer~