Waiting leads to...?

It’s nothing all too special to come by:
The bench, the station,
The passing trains in my wrong direction.
I always wondered what might happen,
If I just took off in one of those
And not have to wait for what I already know. -Joel P.

Picture someone standing alone on the dock of a commuter train station, waiting for the same train he or she always took, headed for the same predictable destination. Same thing every day. While waiting on that train’s arrival, and seeing multiple tracks, many of which head in different directions, what might run through that someone’s mind as they wait?

One person ventured a guess and put that guess into poetic verse.

I don’t know who Joel P. (the author of this verse) is. I picked his brain by accident when he was quoted in a blog post I was reading, written by someone else. Joel’s view on waiting spoke to me of my present situation. You see, I too am waiting. Not for a commuter train, though. I am waiting on God for some badly needed life direction. Thing is, I want to take the familiar life track. Only it appears that my familiar track is not presently available to me, and I am facing some unknown direction, looking at tracks that will take me only God knows where.

As is permissible and typical in many blogs, a reader can respond. And I did. This is what I told the blog’s author in response: What if we didn't wait for what we "know" but took off in some unknown direction. Life would likely be far less boring for lots of us. Maybe.

As I consider this thing we call “waiting” it appears to be something that is not too different from a kind of building material. What I mean is, it could be in the waiting that God builds the anticipation for what's coming next. And maybe the patience. And maybe the trust to go off into the unknown, to take the unknown track, to head out to those who knows where places in life.

In the Bible, old Abram, the patriarch, was given this great opportunity. He got to wait on God and was offered tickets to take a life direction he hadn’t expected, didn’t consciously ask for, but could hardly refuse. God came to him and said: “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.” (Genesis 12:1, NIV)

God told Abram to leave it all behind. In those days, there were no trains. No cars. No planes. In those days, when you went out into the unknown, you were on your own. Survival was not guaranteed. Life could suddenly become a great adventure. It says later that Abram believed God and went. And God reckoned it to Abram as righteousness, and blessed him and his line greatly.

What or who are you waiting for? Maybe when you wait on God, sometimes you just have to be ready to go when and where God says go, even when the timing feels “off” and the tracks before you don’t go in the expected direction, and the trains traveling them aren’t all that safe-looking or familiar.

Surprise Happens

“Readiness for God means that we are prepared to do the smallest thing or the largest thing— it makes no difference. It means we have no choice in what we want to do, but that whatever God’s plans may be, we are there and ready.” –Oswald Chambers

“Always be ready! You don't know when the Son of Man will come.” –Matthew 24:44, CEV

“Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning…” –Luke 12:35, NIV

“None of us knows what the next change is going to be, what unexpected opportunity is just around the corner, waiting a few months or a few years to change all the tenor of our lives.” –Kathleen Norris

When I lost my position as pastor, I was totally unprepared. Just finishing up a very restful and family-filled Thanksgiving week vacation, the unexpected phone call summoning me to a mysterious meeting at someone’s home that very day came as a total surprise, complete with denominational officials and the church personnel chair. In my own words, following the shocking request that I take early retirement and resign as pastor, “I didn’t see it coming.” I was dumbfounded by the suddenness of it all – a six month severance package, yes; but no appeal, no real denominational safeguards, just resign and be gone within a few short weeks. That was the shocker.

But surprise happens. And from that moment, I began to grow acutely aware that the process of waiting on God had begun in earnest. I also began learning that waiting includes being ready for whatever may come, expected or not. And being ready for the expected also best includes being prepared for the unexpected, as both happen all the time. And often do. So what’s next?

Dealing with it
I have re-played the tapes many times.
I have played the “what-if” game over and over.
I have tried to imagine who was responsible, so I could focus my energy on blaming.
I have cried and appealed my case before God and others. I have told and retold the story to friends.

I have felt much grief of my own; I have also felt my wife’s pain.
Doesn’t matter, it doesn’t change what has happened. Fact is, I’m unemployed and it’s a bad time to be unemployed. And I’m a bad age to be unemployed, in a bad profession to be unemployed in. At least that is what the conventional wisdom tapes currently playing in my head are telling me. Like Job’s friends, these tapes say failure is my one true reality.

Yeah, but… while I do need to face what has happened, my faith is also speaking, saying that the trick to dealing with this is being ready, being prepared; waiting on God. I need this, to rise above my disappointment and pain. In other words, I just gotta turn off those darned tapes and turn to God, become open to whatever God is doing in my life now - it could be entirely new.