Day 3732 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Proverbs 19:2 NIV

The One won within waiting.

For most of us it’s a rather weird wondering, this wandering toward the waiting that we’ve rarely had the time to want. Not necessarily because we would disagree as to the waste made in haste, nor then the necessity of our sometimes slowing to what might have been a bettered outcome that could have only come within the crawling through the carrying of the weight of wait. No, I know we do know the now known need to reduce the speed sometimes.

It’s just that still we seem scared of staying too still for too long.

Never know what we’ll miss should we miss this moment as apparently always only made best within the hurry toward our having of whatever everyone else just can’t help but assume they need, along with the speed that blasts on past any possible consideration as to the potential cost of admission unto that day in which our admission will feel either as quick and painless as a warm welcome home or rather as slow and agonizing as what He felt upon that place in which our pasts were paid so as to secure the way by which we might be welcomed.

Thus the way we miss when we feel we must make haste to waste not a moment more upon the careful caution as considered all but contrary to the constant continuing of a culture continuing to crumble.

Yes, within this place we seem to know only the hurry as had within our hoping always to have something more to hold that we might miss having if we don’t hurry up and beat everyone else to the punches as taken so often by us because of us. Indeed, I look back now at a life lived and left to speed and seem to see only the many mistakes made in those many moments of haste in which my highest hope was having fast something that was easy enough to find so quickly.

Completely then missing the irony as ironed out plainly which says that if something is to be good, then it will probably take some time.

Even salvation took a few days to finish rising!

Indeed, outside of God’s ordinary miracles, not that they’re ordinary to us but simply because He speaks in both miracle and mercy, outside of those daily givings unto us of all He is to us as seen inside all He’s done for us and continues therein to do, outside of those gifts, all other good things take time to become the good that must grow in a pace slow enough to promise no mistakes made, no opportunities missed. And thus no ways missed either as aimed toward wherever whatever is waiting to be proven always better than whatever we are wanting wherever we are.

But what do we want?

And where then are we looking for it?

And if we’re not willing to wait for whatever better we want to take all the time it needs to become the best better it can be, then what do we expect other than the excerpt of another excitement that’s finally found only to then begin to fade?

That’s the way I’ve known as won by most within and throughout this life lived in line at what are either polling places spent agonized over the hope that our favorite placeholder wins what we ironically call a race or rather seated inside a driver’s seat at some drive-thru place to grab something to eat eagerly anticipating our meals thrown through our window so we can feed ourselves without having to waste the time otherwise always needed to undertake such a vital necessity.

In fact, within all that it seems that we’ve quite remarkably flipped what matters most with what doesn’t matter at all. For the fact remains that no one serving as soldiers become entangled in civilian affairs, and nor then that which says that God knows each of our hairs and over them cares so much that daily He sends His blessed provision as if still that manna from Heaven which we find still atop this ground, heaping up as much as we need and yet never then knowing the same.

No, we’ve never really known much of what it must be to be in much need. For daily we’re fed. Daily we’re watered, both that of drink and that to drive this car of ourselves toward the growth that we cannot dare imagine we alone know to be waiting. Daily we receive more than we revere. Daily we worry more than we fear. Daily we feel as if we’re falling behind despite His saying that He will lose none of those whom the Father has placed in His care.

Don’t have time to realize that when we care about so many other things that seem to need our time and attention far sooner than the understanding that the Son won’t leave us or let us down.

Indeed, I fear that such a faithful fact as that found in Christ has become a license to live on the run seeking all the fun we can have under the sun before it inevitably sets upon a life in which we’ve scarcely sat for a second or two with the realization that all of this hurrying is getting everywhere that nothing is, and thus nowhere that everything always was.

I think often about all I’ve missed in a life lived in such a constant hurry all the time. Seems I’ve been running since before my feet learned to walk. And look at me now! I still don’t know how to walk, at least not with Jesus, at least not as well as I know we’d both like. And even that is something that I can barely comprehend, this reality that says that the best way to find what’s always been best is for us to close our eyes, fold our hands and insist our knees unto the ground before the One we’ve failed to trust to get us where we never could.

Yeah, I still struggle entirely too often with that concept, just can’t seem to make heads or tails of it as they say. Likely because the only heads and tails I’ve come to worry over are the headlights aimed at all that I still want in and of this already crumbling ruin and too all those taillights of the many who seem to have started earlier than I did toward the getting of whatever it is that we all somehow agree to be of such vital need that we ignore the limits of speed as posted upon the path paved through Scripture calling blessed those who wait upon the Lord to renew their strength into the flying upon eagle’s wings toward wherever we’ve become convinced our own legs can carry us faster.

Never raced an eagle, but I’ve seen the majestic majesty in which they fly so free as to need worry only of a stiff breeze and maybe a storm every now and then.

Guess we worry over such things too as we can barely keep up as it is without the winds of wrath turning against us blowing in those storms that seem to only steal our chance to enjoy the sunny and warm that we all but insist define most days of our lives.

As if what we desire has any such ability to matter!

Been running for so long now, and so fast too that we’ve never gained that ability to say that we always knew that what we wanted never mattered all that much. Just know the hurry toward the way toward whatever it is as is different from the day before in which we ran and ran and tried until we were tried and tired and our tires torn to tears from all the fears we found or felt as fed unto the laps of those already there holding burning coals oddly inquisitive as to the burning sensation that we can’t seem to outrun.

Strange isn’t it?

That we’ve all spent so much time in hope and haste that we’ve placed our hope in the haste as if the hustle of hurry is what matters most? That we dread a day in bed spent sick and tired of life so wired that we’ve worn ourselves out at both ends already? That such a daily lighting of this fire that is our desire has been doing just that? Destroying both here and our hope of forever being anything other than a continuation of the congressional congestion that’s clogged up the highways and hideouts of a people living without the hope of treasures held elsewhere?

I’m tired of trying to find treasure amidst the tattered remnants of a rebellion that’s so run its course that we’ve no recourse when upon that day we find that our very own tongues turn against us and confess that we got it all wrong in all of our hurrying to get right to the point that we thought was waiting at the end of that left turn that we made years ago, and then just kept making for years after that because we just felt that we’d get further going faster in that same direction of our every desire than to douse the fire and find the faith that’s always asked us only to turn around.

Repentance.

A turning from as aimed then toward a then turning toward. Away from something so as to not keep running away from the something else. A moment of slowed patience as proven within the possibility of losing it all and finally, for once, not really caring as to what we lose simply because we’re just tired of being lost and simply want to find what we’ve never felt with our feet on fire and our souls facing the same.

And that’s just it, I’m sick of the blame I’ve fanned to flame against my name, my frame, my audacity to stay the same and still set to claim that I seek the Name that is above mine, His Way then the same. Yes, I am tired of trying to find the way that we can only find when we finally slow down long enough to learn to embrace the weight of having to wait for us to finally realize, and from there grow to understand, that we cannot be the ones who find the way because the Way already found us.

He’s just been waiting for us to stop finding reasons to rush right past Him as He sits calmly upon Calvary beside the cross He carried asking us there to stop and see that He’s already done all we need, and thus all we need is already done, meaning then that we needn’t keep trying to do what doesn’t matter anyway. No, He’s still just asking us to slow down, turn around, and come back home to the hope of a home that He’s prepared well before we started all of our own planning and paving of paths that got us nowhere anywhere close to the everything forever better that He’s already proven.

What are we still looking for? And if our hurry to have it or hold it hasn’t helped us have it or hold it by now, then why keep running circles around the only One who wears both the crown of thorns as twisted of our trying in vain to make our name the name that is above all others as if being scratched upon an already tarnished trophy is truly something to tout about, and too that of glory as given Him by the Father who gave us all into His hands?

Can we find something better than those hands which held the holes that made us whole despite our living of a life so left and lost that we couldn’t find ourselves even if we could walk a million memories a minute?

Again, I’m tired of trying it. I’m tired of trying to find the way that I’m supposed to walk when I know perfectly well that I can’t even walk well the way I’ve wanted to walk. What then makes me think I can find or faithfully follow the Way that I’ve always been too busy to build a relationship with? And if any of us truly believe that faith is such a relationship, then what are trying to rush? Relationships take time, at least those that last. And if we truly want this one to last for all of the forever that He died for it to have, then shouldn’t we put some patience on that?

Shouldn’t we slow down and let faith have the time and trial that it needs to grow? Shouldn’t we slow down long enough that we can finally realize we don’t know where to go nor those how to get there? Shouldn’t we stop running away after all these other things and simply let Him be the very same everything that He’s already done to prove that He’s all we’ll ever need?

Friends, we can’t see any of that if all we care to know is speed. Because haste makes waste as won in mistakes being made without any reason to mess so much up anymore. We cannot keep running through life, through faith, away from either if we’re to ever find either. And I think we know this. No, I know we know this because, let’s be honest, can we really say we’ve ever managed to find much of life, of faith, of hope, of home within all of this running both through life and thus away from faith, hope and home?

No. Or at least I haven’t. Maybe you have, and if so, good on you! But friends, my question is what can we even know of good when we’re going so fast that we feel as if we don’t have the time it takes to understand either the difference or distance between good and better?

I want to know that difference. I want to feel that distance. I want to put some distance between the life I’ve lived in a hurry to live a life I thought was best and the finally living of the life He died to prove was even better than my every biggest imagination or selfish expectation. And I know that the only way to ever know that Way is to slow down long enough for His truth to catch up to all the lies by which we’ve lived. I don’t want to live a lie anymore, because anything had that easy, that quickly, well, it makes you wonder why we ever thought it worth having.

No, good things come to those who wait, and God’s patience with us should inspire our patient reliance upon Him to unwind His will as best as He alone can see fit to unfurl such a glorious hope of life eternal. So let faith grow. Give hope the time it needs. Allow Christ the room and the willingness that He needs in us if He’s to live in us and we in He. Because while we can keep running around trying to find what we haven’t, continuing then to never find what we need is going to remain a thing as well.

And well, we’re simply running out of time to find that He is all we need. And so as the time runs out, maybe we need to stop running. Because hurrying toward everywhere hope isn’t doesn’t help us find where hope is.

It just keeps us thinking that we know where to look for what we were never meant to see anyway.

For faith’s found not by sight. So drop the maps and shut off the phones. Go into a room, go there alone. Sit quietly with God and there in eager expectation. For He will show up for those who expectantly seek Him. But we can’t do that if we keep running past Him. So calm down, for it will all be okay. After all His plans are for our good, no matter how long they may take.

After all, they only feel as if they take so long because He’s willing to wait for us to want Him more than everything that cannot give us what He already has.

And simply put, no amount of hurrying can ever help us see that.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold