When I first started this blog, I toyed around with names involving waiting, because it felt to me that the journey we have been on has involved more waiting than anything else. And I’m not very good at waiting. We have waited on responses from other people, waited for visas (still waiting actually), waited for clarity, waited for confirmation, waited for financial support, waited for schools to respond, waited for just about everything you could imagine. And in our human eyes, where action is everything, results are what matters and waiting time is wasting time, this has sometimes been hard.
We will wait longer when we believe the end result to be worth it. Remember those photos of people waiting to vote in South Africa’s first free elections? Who knows how long some people would have stood in the sun and waited, shuffling forwards a few inches every once in a while. But I can’t imagine that any of them would have looked at the length of the queue ahead of them, shrugged their shoulders and given up. The waiting time in that queue to vote was nothing compared to the time they had waited for that moment, and the enormous significance of the right to vote in their own country for the first time.
My problem was that if I’m honest, sometimes the thing I was waiting for just seemed as if it was going to be more hassle than it was worth. Because when I forget the heavenly perspective and just think about all the hassle involved in uprooting and moving to Africa, it really feels as if it would be easier to shrug and walk off.
The Bible talks in many places about waiting for or on the Lord. Just this morning I read in Isaiah 64 these words:
Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.
What a great reminder that waiting time isn’t dead time, down time, wasted time. While we wait, God acts, because God is always at work. Sometimes he calls us to be busy, to work alongside him and to act. At other times, he calls us to wait for him, and while we wait to marvel at his goodness and power and to trust in his perfect plan and perfect timing.
A few months ago, we turned down the offer of a school place in Cape Town for Izzy. It seemed like a crazy thing to do when other schools were full, but we felt the Lord telling us that this was not the place for her, and that we should trust him and wait. How did we feel that? A combination of common sense (location, information about the school, knowing our own child) and a complete lack of peace about it. Did I then have complete and total peace about turning it down? Um, no. I had quite a few panicky moments wondering if we had been crazy. But God was at work while we were waiting, and we now have places for both girls at schools about 10 minutes walk apart in a much more affordable part of town. And schools that we believe are a great match for our children.
Now, we have to try to find a house to live in, and again, I am reminded that God is at work while I am waiting, and that we don’t need to snatch at the first unsuitable option just because it is available. (Actually, I’m still waiting to even be offered an unsuitable option!) God knows that we will only have one car and that therefore it would be very helpful if we could live within walking distance of the school. He also knows our budget and how big we need a house to be.
It would be nice to think that the waiting is nearly over. In one sense it is, as we will be booking plane tickets within the next few days and hope to head out early in December. But there are more things to wait on God for – and there always will be. A lovely friend of mine encouraged me a while ago to remember that waiting is a big feature of life in Africa, and that the lessons in patience which I was (hopefully) learning now, would be useful in the months to come. When we wait for God, we have the opportunity to learn again that he is not a God who judges, as we do, by success criteria of results or deliverables. Our God sees the heart, and his desire in each of his children is for us to have hearts that are more closely tuned to him. Waiting time is never wasted time if we spend that time growing in faith, in trust and in patience. 
Waiting reminds us of our complete and total dependence on him.
This photo is from a government office somewhere in Thailand, apparently, although the first time I saw it, it was labelled as being in South Africa. Either way, it shows how some cultures deal with waiting in a more relaxed way than ours.
And having a climate where you can wear flipflops has got to help.
I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope.
(Psalm 130:5)
Wherever you are, whatever you are having to wait for – remember that while we wait, God is at work, and he is faithful.
ell in advance, then we can easily begin to feel complacent and that results are down to our good planning. When God gives us a seemingly impossible challenge, we know we have to throw ourselves on his strength and grace to help us. When the deadline draws nearer and nearer without any apparent solution in sight, we have to rely on God’s goodness and perfect timing. There have been a number of times over recent months where we have had to commit our hard-earned cash for things (x-rays, visas, medicals) in faith that God was going to open the door towards which we believe he has been leading us. It has been tempting at times to wait for a bit more funding to be in place before we moved forward, but every time that we have been willing to be sacrificial in our faith and obedience, God has blessed us above and beyond what we could have expected.
African Crossroad 