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Key Bible Verse: The Lord is wonderfully good to those who wait for him Lamentations 3:25). Bonus Reading: Luke 2:25-35

Our culture says, "Don't just sit there; do something!" Most of us think of waiting as a passive, hopeless state determined by events out of our hands. The bus is late? You can't do anything about it, so you have to sit there and wait. Being told, "Just wait," irritates us because it seems to push us into passivity.

But there's none of this passivity in Scripture. Those who wait are living the situation out to the full. They're patient because they know what they're waiting for is growing from the ground on which they're standing. The seed has been planted.

Still, this waiting is open-ended. That's hard for us because we tend to wait for something concrete. To wait open-endedly is to trust that something will happen to us far beyond our own imagination or prediction. Giving up control over our future and letting God define our life, trusting Him to mold us according to His life and not according to our fear, is radical. We wait, actively present to the moment, trusting that new things will happen to us. In a world preoccupied with control, that is a radical stance toward life.

—Henri Nouwen in The Weavings Reader

My Response: Could my impatience mean I'm afraid to really let God be in charge?

Thought to Apply: In prayer, we are aware that God is in action and that when the circumstances are ready, He will call us into action. Waiting in prayer is a disciplined refusal to act before God acts.—EUGENE PETERSON (Bible translator)

Adapted from The Weavings Reader (Upper Room Books, 1993) by permission.

Copyright © 2007 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine. Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.

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Prayer for the Week

Teach me, Lord, to leash in my drive to make things happen and wait expectantly for Your move.

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