In my quiet times this week I have been reading Isaiah, and struggling with it. I wanted something comforting to me during this time with my Mom. I wanted that time in the morning to prepare me for my day with words of wisdom, but I was getting "Woe to the land of the whirring wings," and "In the year that the supreme commander came to Ashdod." I thought, "really Lord...chronologically reading the Bible through this year just is not working for me." But then today it hit me.
This is an excerpt from my journal this morning.
'Waiting. We are waiting for Mom to go to heaven. We are waiting for Christ to return. The people of Isaiah's time - if they believed his prophecy and frankly whether they knew it or not - were waiting for those prophecies to come true.
I want to be an active "waiter" living each day I have here with a passion for Christ and a joy that spills over onto others.' That is how my parents are waiting for this time of pain to end for Mom. We are not a quiet, crying, bemoaning family. I know that others can see our joy even through this pain. I know that through her desire to serve others, even as she approaches her eternal home, my Mom is bringing joy to all the people that she sees each day.
We are all waiting for something. As a believer in the salvation of Jesus Christ, a follower of Him, I should be actively waiting for his return. There is a line of a song that just popped into my head "'til He returns, or calls me home, here in the love of Christ I stand." I love that line, and it is okay to just stand sometimes - in fact it is needed - but I don't want to be a passive waiter, I want to be an active one.
The question is - How do you wait?
Here are some verses that spoke to me this morning - I encourage you to grab a Bible and find some that speak to you.
"O Lord, you are my God, I will exalt you and praise your name, for in perfect faithfulness you have done marvelous things planned long ago." Isaiah 25:1
"You have been a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy in his distress, a shelter from the storm, and a shade from the heat." Is 25:4a
"The sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth." Is 25:8
And my favorite of the morning: "You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord, is the rock eternal."
How do you wait and in whom do you trust?
-jre
