Like Patience with Hot Pizza

It’s May. Everyone I know is in the midst of making big decisions or having last minute doubts about the decisions they’ve made. These are no small things we’re wrestling with. They’re things that determine the influence of our days, the outcome of our lives, whether we stay on the path or end up in a ditch. We seek God’s face – we want him to turn toward our decisions and smile so that we know we’ve chosen well, but we’ll take a frown if it means we avoid stumbling. The problem is that we want our answers now. We don’t want them on the brink of the very last moment. In our haste and anxiety we behave toward God’s answers like we demonstrate patience with hot pizza.

You understand the concept - you know that you shouldn’t take that bite without allowing a little time to pass, but it looks so good! And it hurts so bad! The cheese sticks to the roof of your mouth and leaves a blistering pain that causes you to loose whatever table manners your Momma taught you. Even though you desperately want to chew and swallow you simply can’t put out the conflagration long enough to function and, splut, out it comes on your plate. (A friend of mine calls it Napalm cheese!) Now that bite now looks anything but appetizing and you have no taste buds left to really enjoy the flavor you have been anticipating. It’s a mess and a disappointment that leaves you wishing you had waited and learned to savor the tension, the expectancy, the pregnant pause before the conditions had reached their zenith.

There is something to be said for that kind of hopeful suspense but we just can’t stand the lack of motion. We must act or die from the tension of waiting. And it is in that premature movement that we get burned. God’s timing is perfect. I know you hear that as a cliché but you know it to be true. Do you know that there are 17 verses in the Old Testament that tell us specifically to wait for the Lord? There are many other stories that teach the principle, often from the perspective of those who waited like they’d wait for hot pizza if they had it. The other side of haste is usually self-inflicted pain. So, in this busy busy month of May, a month of endings and beginnings, wait for the Lord! Be strong! Take heart! And wait for the Lord. Or risk getting blistered and burned.