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First Presbyterian Church, Bainbridge, NY
January 16, 2011 D.O’Hara
Isaiah 40:21-31
2 Peter 3.3-13
To Wait For the Lord
Wait.
What does it mean to wait?
For us, living in a fast moving, daily pace of life, the idea of waiting almost goes against the tide. We like to get as much done as we can in as little time as possible.
Waiting, itself, has time limits.
I remember those years when I was in college (and it is quite likely the same in this day and age) when there was a spoken rule about
classes.
It was understood that, if the instructor did not arrive within the first ten minutes after the bell at the beginning of the class period, the students could leave. The class was cancelled.
With many classes this meant nothing as the teacher was present long before any of the students were.
But there were certain classes where some or all of the students hoped that ten minutes would go by quickly.
It might have been a course that they didn’t particularly enjoy. Or it might have been an instructor who was boring or very strict.
Ten minutes seemed to go by very slowly in such cases. The students wished that they didn’t have to wait. But wait they did, and as soon as the clock reached the ten minute mark they were gone.
Yes; waiting did have limits.
To wait means to be patient and not in a hurry.
Yet, life in the western hemisphere is in a fast pace. The technical world that we are in is based on motion and speed in both space and time.
Often the whole business of waiting becomes a block or a hurdle in the path of progress.
And often it is when one has to suddenly stop and wait that we take a second look at just what is going on in our life.
Joel Osteen, the pastor of a megachurch in Houston, Texas whose sermons are televised,
talked about an incident that caused him to take a second look at who he is and what he was doing.
He was on his way to a meeting of some business having to do with his church.
Being in Houston, the highway had many lanes and too much traffic. Eventually he reached a spot where all the traffic was almost stopped, just crawling along.
Like so many people in a similar situation, Joel kept looking at the lines of traffic then his wristwatch and at the traffic again.
Naturally, with the scheduled meeting in mind, the traffic appeared to be going even slower than it was.
Eventually, in the distance he could see a beat up old car on the side of the road. Apparently it had broken down while on the highway and had caused the delay.
As he looked at the vehicle and its driver, Joel was mumbling to himself, saying that the driver should keep his car off the road, buy a new one, and things such as that.
Just as he was about to go past the car, he noticed a bumper sticker on the tail bumper that said Lakeside Church. It was a sticker of the very church that Joel was the pastor of.
Joel was in a hurry to get to a meeting having to do with the operation of that church.
And in so doing – being in that rush – he had become impatient with one of the people whom the real work of the church was for.
In this morning’s Old Testament reading we find God speaking to his chosen people through his prophet Isaiah.
These are the very people that the Lord was leading in their earthly life ... saving them in times of trouble, guiding them to a peaceful life, teaching them just what he wanted of them.
Yet the people weren’t, we could say, getting the whole picture.
From history and the teachings passed down from Moses of long before, the people understood that they were the children of God.
But, as is common with human beings, there was a certain amount of thought that such blessing would mean peace and comfort and a lack of want.
When God finally brought the Israelites out of Egypt, led by Moses, the people understood that they would be guided to a land of their own where they would live safely and according to their own desires.
But God did not bring them safely out of Egypt and unto a clear road that would lead them to that promised land.
For forty years they moved around in what we call the wilderness. Time and again God challenged them and their devotion and loyalty to him.
And time and again the people became angry with God and made demands of God and even turned from God to worship idols and false gods.
As we know, those people never did cross the river, into that promised land. Not even Moses.
They had become unworthy before their Lord, and it was their children who did cross the Jordon into the land that God had promised the Israelites.
On and on through time the people were challenged. Their patience was challenged. If they were supposed to be receiving something from God, they expected to see it in the near future.
They were, then, as we are now. Impatient.
Around 700 B.C., through Isaiah God spoke to the people.
“Have you not known?
Have you not heard?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?”Is40.21
‘I am over all, and everything on earth - including all people - is under me.’
And then he said, “Why do you, my chosen people, say, ‘My way is hidden from the Lord, and what is rightfully mine is disregarded by my God’?”Is40.27
So much does happen in the earthly life of every person. But just because it happens to an individual doesn’t mean that it is what God has
planned.
A person must wait for the Lord to carry out his will … the Lord’s will.
Doing things in mortal fashion/ with mortal purpose and mortal desire will bring weariness and exhaustion to a person.
But if a person waits for the Lord ... if a person aims their deeds, purposes and desires on God and God’s will, they will not become weary.
Rather, they will gain strength, will move on and will not grow weary.
This applies to the people in this modern world – to you and me among others – as well as to the Israelites of 700 B.C.
To wait for the Lord.
Therein lies the rub. God is on a different time level, perhaps, than we are.
The human being exists with a chronological mind. That is, we understand things to happen or occur in a steady order regarding time.
When our daughter was three she would often say – when talking about something – “That was when I was sixteen, but now I’m three.”
We would laugh and talk about how cute that was.
Of course, as we were quite certain, that would never really happen. It couldn’t happen. One must be three long before they are sixteen.
A team can’t score a touchdown until they have the football.
You can’t apologize to someone until you’ve done something that you are regretful for.
You can’t show photographs taken during your vacation in some other country until you have been there and done that.
And for us, the hour does not come ahead of the minute, and tomorrow never comes before today.
But why must God be limited by the earthly measure of time? We human beings expect our Lord to operate on a time line just as we do.
But does he? Must he?
The Israelites who were enslaved by the Egyptians believed that God would save them, would free them from captivity. And the Lord
did.
But it was several hundred years before that happened.
If those people felt that the Lord had forgotten them, had they really taken time to wait for the Lord? Whose time schedule were they following?
In the Book of Hebrew, the author is writing to some early followers of Christ. They were Jewish people who had believed in the teachings of Christ as were spread by the Apostles and the early followers of Jesus Christ.
But that resulted in a certain amount of persecution and suffering of one sort or another.
They had been expecting some signs of their salvation through Christ in a relatively short period of time, but little if anything appeared to be happening for their benefit.
Some were turning back to their former beliefs and practices, forgetting what Jesus had taught.
But had they really waited for the Lord? Whose time schedule were they following?
In Peter’s second letter he wrote to people (early Christians) who had become confused by the teaching of false teachers who were misleading the people in ways that satisfied themselves rather than God.
Christ had promised to return to his people, and many of the early believers understood that to mean that he would appear on earth before they died.
Now they were wondering just how true Christ’s promise of return was.
Peter said, “But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.”2Pt3.8-9
Were they really waiting for the Lord?
“Whose time schedule are you following?” Peter was asking. “Your own or the Lord’s?”
And that same question needs to be asked each and every one of us.
We live by a time schedule. Wittingly at some times and unwittingly at others. Whether we want to or not, we allow time to lead us in our everyday living.
But when it comes to the Lord, are we expecting him to operate on our time schedule? Or are we willing to follow his?
And whose should we follow anyway?
Certainly, in our everyday, earthly life, the chronological order of time is a must. Until humans develop some other manner of using time, that is the best way that we know.
But following time does not mean that we must rush. We all need to slow down our car and observe – really observe – what we are passing in the road of life.
If we do so, maybe we will find some interesting things on the bumpers of other cars.
And when it comes to the Lord, let us each follow God’s time schedule ... God’s time line.
It may seem slow to us. Answers from God to our questions / that we tend to expect and want very quickly will, quite likely, not come that way.
But wait. Wait for God.
Why?
“Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.”Is40.31
From the beginning to the end, wait for the Lord.
Let us pray.
O Lord, we ask you to be with us now and throughout time that we will hear you calling us to lead us in ways that are right and purposeful in your heart and mind. Knowing that all that is good is found in you and through you, may we wait with patience for you, our Lord. Amen