Waiting Well
My soup curse
I had incredibly high expectations for myself going into college, one of which was cooking. In my first week in Auburn, I planned out all my meals, made a grocery list, went shopping, and got everything cooked for the week on a single Sunday afternoon. (I know...I was impressed with myself, too.) It’s safe to say things were going beautifully.
Well...except for one small problem. You see...although I did, in fact, do all the things I just described, I also hated every second of it.
I very quickly realized that cooking (and washing dishes afterward) took a lot more time than I was really willing to put into it. On top of that, waiting for food to actually be ready to eat felt like it took forever. So, perhaps inevitably, I began to distance myself from the toxic relationship I had with my oven and started to get to know (my now best friend) my microwave.
I love my microwave. She has never once failed to provide me with warm food in a reasonable amount of time, and except for the time I forgot to take the tin foil off my potatoes, doesn’t give me anxiety about doing something wrong and burning down the city of Auburn. However, as wonderful as she is, relying on my microwave did eventually lead to a significant decrease in the quality of the food I was eating, and even though I didn’t have to wait as long for my food to be ready, waiting for things to warm up still sucked. And to be honest, by the end of the semester, my impatience had reached a new low. At times, I was too impatient to even microwave my food for 1-2 minutes, so I resorted to eating it cold. Yes, you heard that right...cold. (Also, yes, I am aware of how sad this sounds.)
Instead of waiting five minutes to heat tomato soup in the microwave and trusting that the good people at Campbell’s knew what they were doing when they wrote the directions on the can, I decided I knew better. Besides, as a freshman in college, I pretty much knew everything already anyway, right?
Well, believe it or not, cold, chunky soup doesn’t taste all that great, but this was unfortunately not the last time I disappointed my grandmother and ate cold food. I had grown far too impatient to even wait those few extra minutes and kept eating things cold and settling for less than what I could’ve had. Looking back now, I can clearly see that I was insane. If I had only chosen to wait a little longer and followed the instructions of the one who literally made the food, I could have enjoyed something so much better.
Transition time
Now that I’ve just thrown out some random facts about my strange eating habits, you may be wondering what this story has to do with anything.
Well...the point I’m trying to make is that every single person alive today, including myself, hates waiting, even if we know it’s going to pay off in the future, and I think that becomes especially clear during this time of year. People can hardly get through thanksgiving without thinking about what they want to buy the next day. Students are too focused on getting a break to actually focus on school. Adults are looking ahead to the new year and thinking about all the changes they want to make. And EVERYTHING gets overshadowed by the anticipation of Christmas. It feels impossible to be present and focus on where we are at because we are always looking ahead to something better. And if we’re not careful, those seasons of waiting and anticipation can turn into disappointment about where God has us at any given moment.
This is why I think it’s incredibly important to understand how to wait well and, more than that, to be expectant of what God can do during seasons of waiting.
The Bible
2 Peter 3:8-18 gives us this perspective on waiting:
But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.
Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.
So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him. Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.
Therefore, dear friends, since you have been forewarned, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of the lawless and fall from your secure position. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.
Peter’s words here remind us that while waiting may feel endless, it has a purpose, and God’s timing is always perfect. As I’ve been thinking through this passage, I’ve come up with three things that I believe God is trying to communicate about what it means to wait well.
How to wait well
Trust God’s Timing
It’s easy to forget that God has an entirely different perspective on time than we do. As Peter points out, a thousand years to us can be like a single day to God. His plans have eternal implications, while our plans, no matter how well-intentioned, will always be limited by human understanding.
Trusting God’s timing means believing he will work everything out for our good and his glory, just like he promises. It means trusting that he won’t withhold anything good from those who are actively seeking him. It means resting in the fact that if he doesn’t give us what we’ve been waiting or asking for, we know that whatever he has for us is infinitely better.
Throughout Scripture, we even see examples of people who waited on God and were blessed because of it:
Abraham waited decades for a child and eventually became the father of nations, including the lineage of Jesus.
Jacob waited 14 years to marry Rachel, and their family included Joseph, who played a crucial role in saving Israel during a time of famine.
While God rarely operates on our timeline, he always shows up at the right time.
Use the Wait Wisely
While waiting on God is important, we’re also not meant to sit back and do nothing. Verse 12 says we should “look forward to the day of God and speed its coming.” Other translations use the word hasten here instead of speed, which means to act quickly or press toward something. In other words, waiting is an active process.
In verse 14, Peter calls us to “make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him.” Periods of waiting are opportunities to let God work in us while we work on growing in holiness and driving sin out of our lives.
Waiting is a chance to prepare ourselves to become the people God has called us to be—to become more like Jesus. God wants to be pursued, and he wants to see that we believe he’s worth seeking.
One of my best friends challenged me just a few weeks ago not to get so consumed with trying to find the right door out of the “room” I am in at this point in my life that I forget there is still work that I can be doing in that room now. And I think that’s what using periods of waiting for God’s glory should look like.
Recognize Waiting as a Gift
Verse 15 reminds us that “our Lord’s patience means salvation.” Here, Peter is most directly referring to when Jesus will come back, so it is important to keep that context in mind, but I also think that the idea of God leaving us in extended periods of waiting as an extension of his grace is a beautiful picture that can be encouraging when it starts to feel like waiting is more of a punishment than a gift.
Yes, at times, it may feel like God is keeping us from something that we really, really want, but in reality, he is opening the door for us to obtain something that we really, really need. He is not trying to take something from us, but rather to do something for us...something that only he can do.
Peter ends the passage by warning us not to let waiting lead us into sin or despair. Instead, he calls us to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” If you focus on spending every season and every moment of your life growing closer to Jesus, then I promise that will be far better than whatever you happen to be waiting on.
Back to soup
Regardless of what you’re facing right now, I’m willing to bet you’re waiting on something...Christmas, the new year, healing, a vacation, a breakthrough in school, a relationship, a job, a miracle. Whatever it is, though, remember this: God moves while we wait, even when we can’t feel it.
When we trust God’s timing, use waiting as an opportunity for growth, and view it as one of His many gifts, seasons of waiting can become something to look forward to. They’re opportunities to be expectant of the amazing things only God can do in our lives. No matter how impossible your situation, God promises that he is orchestrating things in heaven and on earth in order to accomplish whatever he has planned for your life.
It’s easy to start to settle for less than God’s best when we are so eager to see results instantly. In reality, the few minutes it would’ve taken for me to warm up that soup is nothing compared to how much better it would’ve been than when I just got it done as quickly as possible. In the same way, however impossibly long it may seem like God is asking you to wait, that period of time is nothing compared to eternity and how much better life will be by waiting on God.
Instead of doing things my own way and just eating things cold all the time, I would be much better off trusting the creator of whatever food that may be and cooking things the way they intended for them to be. So, instead of choosing to do things our way and rushing the Creator’s timing, we will be infinitely more fulfilled trusting the One who created us and striving to live life in the way he intended.
Every Christmas, I like to read an Advent devotional called Waiting Here for You by Louie Giglio (which I would highly recommend), and I want to end with the following passage from that book:
“Christmas is a story of longing fulfilled. That’s why it gives us reason to celebrate the goodness and nearness of God in the midst of our waiting seasons. As we struggle with our own sense of silence, and as we strain to see God at work in our convoluted lives, Christmas urges us on by reminding us that God will come through on His promises...waiting is not wasting when we are waiting on His plans to unfold.”