The Waiting Room

Everybody knows this room. Everyone, at one point or another, has had to wait. I often think waiting is one of God's favorite tools to getting us where He wants us--the point of maturity. There are other tools He employs, of course, but compared to some that are downright painful (suffering, chastisement), I'm certainly ok with waiting.

Currently I am looking forward to a couple different things--receiving details regarding my specific placement in England (If you're wondering why I haven't told you about that yet, it's simply because I don't know), the approval and arrival of my visa and the day my plane takes off--and I find myself again in the oh-so-familiar waiting room.

So, as we all spend time there, the question remains: what do you do while you're in the waiting room? The are several options. You could complain about the whole situation and count the minutes as they tick by. That will surely make your friends want to hang out with you more. You could waste time with meaningless, frivolous activities. And honestly, I have found myself slipping into that option at times. Or you could embrace the challenge. What is the challenge? To wait well.

How do we wait well? Well, first, we stop whining, complaining, and wasting, and then we make a conscious effort to turn our waiting room into a work room. I won't lie--that's not my idea. I stole it from a preacher's wife. But she's absolutely right. The best thing to do as you wait is to get to work. It doesn't matter what you're waiting for--next week to arrive, your prince to show up or the day you get to retire--working makes the waiting pass faster. And better than that, it's productive! You can wait and work and make the time count in the process. You can be effective while you wait. We are all in the waiting room, to one degree or another. We have all come through one door just to wait to go through another. So let's wait well and make the passage from door to door significant.