As a parent, I found that an astonishing amount of my time was spent on waiting. Just the other day, I commented to Clarissa that I spent on average 2 hours waiting for her. On an normal day, I would spent half an hour waiting for her in school before she get picked up, another half an hour would be spent ferrying her to tuition class. Night time, I would be waiting for her to finish her dinner so that I could go through some of the tougher homework with her.
I have never thought about such time spent on waiting until I found myself repeating the same sentences day after day like "Please have your dinner now!" or "Please start doing your homework now!" Unfortunately, my "patience" was not always reciprocated. If Clarissa wanted something from me, she would want it now, without a moment of delay. In fact, it came to a point when I had to explain to her that I too had to spend time waiting for her. Initially, she found it hard to believe and began to itemize every single event that took place throughout the week. To both our amazement, there was only one instance that she actually spent time waited for me. I won the "competition" of waiting hands down, without a doubt.
When I examined my own spiritual life, it came as no surprises that I treated God, like the way Clarissa behaved towards me. "Dear God, it would be great that my prayers could be answered ASAP (read NOW)! But as to my shortcomings, I need a bit more time before I could surrender to you!" or "Lord, I am tired of always waiting for You to answer my prayers (and I have no idea that You have spent a long time, waiting for me to listen to what You have to say as I was too busy with other less significant matters in my life!)" Being a parent made me realize that our Heavenly Father had made more sacrifices than I had realized.
Lord, please help me not to take you for granted. For every moment that I spent waiting for Clarissa, remind me that You are also waiting for me, to pray and spend time with You.
Hi Fee,
ReplyDeleteI was looking over another blogger's entry in her site where she touched on the short book of Haggai (only 2 chapters). Interestingly, in Hag 1:2, the phrase, "The time has not yet come ..." was used. Apparently, the remnant of Israel, after the exile to Babylon, were supposed to re-build the house of the LORD at Jerusalem (the 1st temple, the temple of Solomon was destroyed previously), but they felt it was not yet time for them to do that, when at the same time they thought it was time for them to build houses of their own. The Lord's rebuke was that they were "just surviving" so to speak, because they had not put their priority right, had not put the LORD interests before theirs, wanting to be honored by their new houses, but not first letting the LORD has his pleasure and the honor of His house, kind of telling God, "You wait!"
Why don't we, including myself, put God's interests higher up, and watch God bless our life to be more abundant than "just surviving"?
Anthony Chia