O tarry and await the Lord’s pleasure; be strong, and he shall comfort your heart; wait patiently for the Lord. Psalm 27
Traffic is light on Sunday mornings here in our neck of the woods. Even when going to the “late” service at 9:30, there are hardly any signs of life on Division once I get past the grocery store between where I live and the church. We have traffic signals, which are helpful during the week, but on Sundays they primarily serve a decorative function. Two of the three always greet me with a green, smiling glow, but the third doesn’t like me. As I approach, it swaps over from green to red at light speed. I’m sure it skips right past amber!
What is worse, the signal remains red for an intolerably long time. I have a good view of the intersection in all directions, and confess I am tempted to just make my turn. “No one’s coming,” I say to myself. “No one’s looking,” I continue. I scan the cables and poles, confirming there are no traffic cameras recording miscreants. I survey the scene in all directions, probing for any signs of a law enforcement presence.
There are none! But I wait. I do not yield to the temptation to disobey the law, overruling common sense with what is often referred to as the “spirit of the law” (by “letter of the law” breakers). It’s a fitful sort of waiting I do, sitting at a red light against which I “know” I could safely turn. But why? Why should I make that turn against the red?
Even if I were not caught by traffic cameras or law enforcement, the fact is I would be caught by me. The only advantage I find in breaking a law is that I would finally have something to confess in church once I got there. I mean, I hate going to church empty handed, no sins to confess: “Sorry God, you died for nothing again this week.”
I josh, of course! Sin is sin, and even if I obey traffic laws meticulously, I can’t say the same for the Big Seven (Sloth, Lust, Anger, Pride, Envy, Gluttony, or Greed). Try as I might to be a decent human being and a reflection of the Divine, I know I’m “anything but.” That’s where God comes in. I’m “anything but” in life, but I’m a “work in progress” as far as God’s concerned, and it is that for which I am eternally grateful. Church is “Our Carpenter, who art in heaven’s” workshop.
Traffic lights, slow shoppers, insufficient registers open at the store: those are all irritants and produce a restless sort of waiting. But the psalmist places a different sort of waiting on the table in front of us. It isn’t the tapping of your toes and drumming of your fingers in the doctor’s waiting room kind of idleness. Too often I think we approach life and one another with a “Come on! Let’s get on with it” kind of impatience.
The psalmist’s “tarry” kind of waiting is like what we experience when Christmas finally arrives and we can open our gifts, or when it is our birthday and Mom walks out of the kitchen carrying a big old birthday cake thick with frosting, loaded with blazing candles, and the family exploding into the (now copyright-free) Happy Birthday song.
That’s the kind of waiting to which the psalmist is referring. There is that happy kind of waiting we can see at a traffic signal if we just let God sprinkle our eyes with a bit o’ faith.
Red lights serve a particular function: Yes, they command us to stop, but they also allow us time to look for “cross” traffic. Cross traffic has the green light. God always gives cross traffic a green light to engage in faith, hope, and love. Our joy comes in knowing that soon we, ourselves, will be someone else’s cross traffic. It will be OUR turn to face green and engage in faith, hope, and love.
That’s why we tarry. The Lord is at work, and we get to pause, to catch our breath, and to live “in” the moment. That’s why we wait patiently for the Lord. We tarry here in this, our valley, delighting in the blessings hiding behind the red light.
Keith Axberg writes on matters concerning life and faith. Author of: Who the Blazes is Jesus? Good News for a Vulgar World (available through Amazon in Print and e-book)
No comments:
Post a Comment