There is this place of undisturbed quietness where love is not deserted; see how things pass away and give place to others; fix your dwelling firmly there. Put your trust, my soul, in whatever it is you have received from him. Entrust to him whatever comes to you; for you shall lose nothing.
~ Saint Augustine of Hippo
For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” But you were unwilling, and you said, “No! We will flee upon horses”; therefore you shall flee away; and, “We will ride upon swift steeds”; therefore your pursuers shall be swift. A thousand shall flee at the threat of one; at the threat of five you shall flee, till you are left like a flagstaff on the top of a mountain, like a signal on a hill.
Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore He exalts Himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for Him. For a people shall dwell in Zion, in Jerusalem; you shall weep no more. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry. As soon as He hears it, He answers you. And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide Himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left. Then you will defile your carved idols overlaid with silver and your gold-plated metal images. You will scatter them as unclean things. You will say to them, “Be gone!”
~ from the oracle Isaiah, in chapter 30
There are those days beloved. There are the days when the feeling falls out of our experience of faith in Him. One day we are sitting in the fullness of Joy in the nexus of the near Presence of our Creator. And the next day, we simply feel like the walls are crashing in around us.
And both are very good days.
The days of Joy hone the facets of the diamond-hard strength He is building into us to battle on in this spiritual trek towards His Kingdom (which is most surely coming).
And for the other days?…. For those who have learned that He is eminently trustworthy, we have learned to allow Him to keep building the skill that brings the most power to the moment… Waiting.
Waiting is that timeless state of being wherein we take on all the instruction, wisdom, grace, strength, power and courage required to fulfill the will of the One who we have reckoned in charge of our situation. In that reality which is measured by a clock, waiting might take decades – or milliseconds. “How long” is not the point. Waiting is just waiting.
The effect of waiting on our spirit is analogous to the refreshing our physical bodies receive from proper rest. It is the ceasing of striving, the end of expecting, and the complete stopping of any sort of motion within our souls. Said in a grossly simple way, it is like stopping a car, popping the transmission into neutral and simply letting the engine idle. And it is in this state, that we are ready for motion – but have no need for it without direct input from Him to proceed.
And it is in this space where He is most able to speak with us. For waiting is the overall posture of the believer who truly believes the first tenet of the Gospel, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” That is, blessed are those who have figured out they cannot do good or reach G_d by themselves, and have simply stopped trying.
So then, once we get stopped, and actually start waiting – it is here where He can begin to renew the strength we have sensed bleeding off in the turbulence of this fallen world and the spiritual battle commencing around us. We cease from any sort of worrying or anxiety and simply look at the Solution to the problem. We cease from any sort of self-motivated action, for we know clearly that anything (even self-motivated attempts at right behavior) from the flesh cannot please G_d – and simply are ineffective in His economy.
For, in stopping, ceasing, waiting and looking we are yielding to the only One in the universe who can actually supply the knowledge and energy required to accomplish the impossible tasks set before us. They are impossible because they are works created beforehand by an infinite and manifoldly-wise Being, and they are being used to fulfill a Master Plan we cannot even begin to comprehend. Said more simply, we begin to see that presenting our whole selves as instruments and weapons and clean vessels of righteousness is the only reasonable response in this milieu.
And use us He does. But He does not just swing us like some mallet banging the skull of some minion of darkness. No, He animates and energizes our entire being in such a way that we become salty and light and powerful and fragrant in the fight. We become warriors of Light.
And yes, as backwards to the ways of the world as this sounds, we get there by waiting on Him.
The Bible shows this truth throughout, but one of the most wonderful examples is seen in the person of Joshua, who was used mightily to save the Jews from defeat in the promised land. How did he get all this power? All this strategic initiative? All this momentum? For starters… He waited on the L_RD. He literally would not depart from the Presence of G_d in the tent of meeting during the months and years before crossing over the Jordan. He was convinced of something to which we only sometimes give lip service. He knew most assuredly that the Author and Finisher of the whole thing was in that tent. There was no where else on the planet he should be. Anywhere else, doing anything else was simply missing the point.
Feeling weak tonight beloved? Good. Just wait.
Think of yourself just as a seed patiently wintering in the earth; waiting to come up a flower in the Gardener’s good time, up into the real world, the real waking. I suppose that our whole present life, looked back on from there, will seem only a drowsy half-waking. We are here in the land of dreams. But cock-crow is coming.
~C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)
