patience

Patience.

Not the game, but the virtue.

We're not always all that good at it. But the Lord plainly is.

I was stuck in a waiting room this morning. For an hour and sixteen minutes.

Not that I didn't have other things I was able to do. But I still was obliged to wait.

It wasn't a doctor's or dentist's surgery, or anything like that. No. I was effectively queuing for tickets.

My son is away on holiday just at the moment. And tickets for a football match he's wanting to attend went on sale this morning. At 7am.

It's an 'on line' thing. So he'd asked me to get them for him and I was happy to oblige. And although I logged in at 7am on the dot, I still had an hour and a bit to hang around in this (very pleasant) 'virtual' waiting room.

(It struck me that an amazing number of people must be up and about at 7 o'clock on a Monday morning! But that's beside the point.)

It's an odd and interesting experience.

They manage the virtual waiting room quite well. So that when you first 'arrive' there's a 30-second 'countdown' going on at the bottom of the screen. Which made me think in my huge naivety that it wasn't really all that long that I'd have to wait.

Except that once the 30 second countdown was up, it reverted back to another 30 second countdown. And again. And again, and again, and again. Over 150 times in all, I realised in hindsight, by the time I was done.

To start with, it's easy to be patient. I knew there'd be a queue and a wait but I figured being up and about at 7am it wouldn't be all that long. 'The early bird catches the worm.' Some pious principle like that, I assumed, would apply. The Lord honours the virtue of those who rise early.

That was how I was thinking, I guess. But as the time went on, I began to think that maybe I'd got myself stuck out there in cyberspace. Lost without trace, with a stupid ticking 30-second clock my only company.

Forgotten. That's what it felt like. Waiting and waiting. And the longer the time went on the more the confidence drained that the promise would be fulfilled.

(Because the screen was full of promise, of course -

We are currently experiencing very high demand. As a result, you have been placed in our holding area. Please be patient and wait for the timer below. Thank you for your patience.

That sort of thing. And you've had enough bad experience of this sort of thing over the years to make you start to doubt it after a while).

Anyway, an hour and sixteen minutes later on, when I'd long since given up anticipating anything other than this infuriating 30-second timer doing its repetitive jig across the screen, to my total surprise, the promise is fulfilled. And in less than 30 seconds I have bought my son his tickets.

And, boy, did it feel good!

It was, as I say, a 'virtual' waiting room.

Which is what an awful lot of life is like as well. A virtual waiting room. Having to wait for a dreadful long time in the hope of God doing his thing.

And starting to wonder if maybe you've got it all wrong, and starting to think that maybe the whole thing's a farce, that God simply will not deliver.

The longer the time goes on with no sign of God doing his thing, the more the doubts creep in.

There's loads of stuff like that in the Bible, I realise.

People having to wait. And wait.

For lengths of time that make my 76 minute sojourn in Chelsea's virtual waiting room seem really not that hard.

Loads of people like that. Like Abram and Sarah. Not able through all the years to have any children of their own. And promised by God (when way past the age and the stage of life when children could ever be born) - promised by God that he would yet give them a child.

So they wait. And wait. And wait. Years on end. Until they just about give up all hope.

And then, when it all seems too late, the miracle child appears. Amazing.

God is astonishingly patient. Prepared to wait. And he looks to us to learn ourselves to trust him as we wait and know that in the fulness of the time he'll come up trumps and deliver the goods.

I had a lengthy chat yesterday afternoon with someone here about that. Because for this person time is running out and if massive finance isn't found then ... well, I guess, it's 'curtains', in the theatrical sense of the word. The end of the show. The end of the road. The end.

You have been placed in our holding area. Please be patient and wait for the timer below.

(And keep waiting, please!)

And as the timer ticks away, you just begin to wonder. Have we got lost in some sort of spiritual cyberspace?

But no, it's a 'holding' area. God's got a hold of us. And he's got a handle on our situation, too.

I was with a man this afternoon whose wife had died. They've been married for 68 years and the guy must be up and into his 90s now.

They didn't have any children. I knew that from long ago. But it made me think of Abram again. Here were a couple who'd had to wait. A lifetime of waiting for them, I guess.

In the evening I was with someone else. Trying to tease out with the person lots of long-since buried emotional 'stuff' that's been there in the caverns of the heart for ... well, for absolutely years.

Since the person was 9 years old or so, it gradually emerged. And that was hardly yesterday.

But it's maybe only now God deems it safe to draw these hurts and scars up to the surface of the person's heart in order that his healing grace may be at last applied.

It reminded me just a little bit of all the bits of shrapnel that had got themselves deep buried in my father's leg during the war. From time to time for years and years thereafter another little bit would sort of ease its way up to the surface and be finally removed.

There's vast amounts of emotional shrapnel deeply, deeply buried in this person's life. I'd sensed that was the case. Which is why I'd gone round to the house.

And it was like the Lord himself has waited very patiently over ever so many years. Sitting there in a kind of virtual waiting room, not rushing in but waiting, waiting, waiting 'til the time was right.

And here he was, beginning now to tease this shrapnel out and to the surface.

The person didn't know how or what to pray at all. But all that's really needed is that all these bits of shrapnel, all these hurts from years and years ago, are somehow all identified and brought before the Lord.

Just saying to the Lord - Here, way back then, that hurt. And this, as well, that hurt as well. And this. And that.

Naming them all, and thereby, as it were, simply opening the door to the Lord and allowing him access at last with all of his healing grace.

I think it was a guy called Hallesby, in a little book called 'Prayer', who once suggested prayer is really just opening the door to the Lord onto different areas of need. Inviting him in and giving him thus the access that he needs to work his healing grace.

It was that sort of thing tonight. And I think, although, it took a long, long time - I think it helped. And healing was starting to happen.

And I thought at the end of the day how very, very patient is the Lord. I mean, he's waited years. Absolutely years.

And he's never given up hope that the day would come when the healing he longs to impart could at last begin to be given.

Knowing how patient he is makes it slightly less hard to be patient myself in the face of the waiting I often am called on to do.

I'll one day always get those metaphorical 'tickets for the match'.

You have been placed in our holding area. God's got a hold on my life and he's got a handle on my needs. "I'm holding you," he promises.

Please be patient and wait for the timer below. I'll get what's been promised at last.