As Brady Nemmers, lead teaching pastor of Keystone Community Church, taught us this past weekend, God often leverages pivotal circumstances in our lives in order to grow our faith. He called this process, “spending time in the waiting room.” In much the same way we’ve spent significant time in a hospital waiting room, anxiously awaiting word on the condition of a loved one, we also spend time in “the waiting room of the soul.”
It’s in this waiting room where we pleadingly wait for God to intervene in the pain and chaos of our lives: a relationship seemingly beyond repair, the unending grief of loss, a crushing job loss, or a child who’s gone tragically sideways. We wait, and wait, and wait.
Mary and Martha waited. After sending word to Jesus that Lazarus (their brother and Jesus’ close friend) was deathly ill, they waited for Jesus to arrive and miraculously intervene (in much the same way he had for many others, including those he didn’t know, much less love). For days they waited, staring down a dusty road, a road completely absent of the One who could fix the problem.
As Pastor Nemmers said, in times like these we have a choice: either to grow spiritually as we move closer to Jesus, or to walk away from him and the faith. It’s a choice many of us have to make every day as we continue to sit in the waiting room.
Today, again commit your “waiting room experience” to God and pray for the strength to move closer to Jesus even as you remain in your waiting room chair.
