Waiting

You are the beloved. So be the loved. Receive your belovedness and then hand it out, receive grace and be gracious to others, remember your image-bearing identity and move into the world with a job to do. Show up as you are with what you've been given. And don't allow the voice of doubt and discouragement to hold you back.
But doubt and discouragement aren't our only hindrances to showing up in the world. It is possible for us to uncover the art we were born to make and show up to release it into the world only to be met with silence, inability to make progress, and a seemingly impossible artless road ahead. The lack of movement isn't because of fear or sin or lack of belief. Sometimes it's simply God asking us to wait.

These are Emily's words preceding the most crucial, most touching, most difficult chapter for me in her book, perhaps the reason why I was to read this book.

Yes, I too feel like I am in a period of waiting and that is why these words were most helpful.

You are in a season of waiting. When you finally show up ready to release your art by being the person you believe you are created to be, there may be nothing more disheartening than to be asked to wait. The waiting can drive us mad if we let it. It can become a merciless dictator, shoving us into shapes we aren't made for, shapes of worry and doubt and short tempers.
But the waiting can also grow us, shape us from the inside out for sacred work. This is a kind of work that happens only in the secret place of abiding in the presence of Christ even in the midst of broken dreams and tired circumstances.
We have a Maker who doesn't just throw the sun up into the sky in a shock of fire, but pulls it up slow every morning and down the same way every night. And if you stare as it happens, the change is hard to see, but if you close your eyes and count to twenty, everything is different when you open them back up again. It's because a lot happens in the transition--secret things, beautiful things, Spirit-led things.
There is still movement in this waiting, though it may be hard to see.

Emily shares two things that God said to her and her husband while they're waiting.

Move toward God. In all things, see Jesus. In all circumstances, whether success or failure, questions or answers, beauty or ashes, acceptance or rejection, look for Jesus. Stop trying so hard to read the Scriptures to look for answers but instead, let the Scriptures read you. Move toward God.
The second thing we sense God is saying to us in this: Move toward one another. In all things, love each other as you are but have a vision for what you could be. Pay attention to the vision God is casting for your marriage, your family, the community you live in. See one another according to the Spirit, not according to the flesh. Move toward one another and receive the other as they move toward you.

Instead of dreaming for big things in our future, I'm beginning to realize it's more important to dream awake right now. And so we wait. We move toward God because he first moved toward us, and we move toward one another in faith.

God does things differently. He said, Let there be light, but then he waited a full day before he spoke again. And on the last day, he rested. He built waiting into creation. From the incarnation to the resurrection, divine creativity begins and ends with waiting.

Consider the mystery of Christ in you. As soon as we ask for the how, we lose the wonder. The Spirit came over Mary in a moment, but it took nine months for him to grow. Jesus waited thirty years to begin what we call his earthly ministry. But really, wasn't he always being God in the world, from his first breath to his last? He was crucified and waited until day three to resurrect. Don't lose hope on day two.
Waiting paves the way for the art.

Sacred and secret things happen in the waiting. Moments of heaven touch earth, breathe life into babies inside their mamas and bread sitting on my counter. The work is invisible, but the result is not.

Show up in the place where you already are fully alive as the image bearer God made you to be. Embrace the mysterious, invisible work of Christ even when it seems like nothing is happening. You are an image bearer and you have a job to do--whether you see the results or whether you don't.

Lord, I'll close my eyes now...

"But for you, O Lord, do I wait;
it is you, O Lord my God, who will answer."

~Psalm 38:15

 

Keep CZECHING IN!