Waiting For Small Things

This morning as I prayed I started thinking about waiting.  In actuality, we spend a lot of our lives waiting, and sometimes we don't even know what we're waiting for.

This picture was taken back in 2003.  We prayed to pack 1,200 boxes that year and God ended up giving us 1,234 (love that number.)  If you'd told me then that fourteen years later I'd be praying for 27,000 boxes I might have run away screaming.  I didn't know what I was waiting for; but God did.

For the past couple months I've been 'meeting' in a Bible study with younger women in Maryland. I'm the only one who attends remotely via FaceTime.  I hope some day I get to give each of them a hug, but I'm enjoying seeing them from afar and talking about women of the Bible.

Last night we talked about Sarah and how the biblical account of her life doesn't really begin until she's 65 years old.  She lived for 65 years doing her daily routines--serving her husband and never knowing that hundreds of years later a group of women would be studying her life and passing judgment on her decisions.  She spent years waiting on God's promise.  I can't begin to imagine her emotions when that baby moved inside her for the first time!

People I love are waiting and I was praying for some of them this morning: waiting to marry; waiting to hold a baby of their own; waiting to be healed.  Waiting for God to do big things in their lives that only He can do.  And I, too, am waiting with them.

But there's also the faithful waiting for the small things.  We have been praying week by week for stuffed animals for our packing party and, WOW, has God been blessing us.  Last week He brought us 941 and this week so far 681.  Now we're waiting for Him to provide more places to store all those blessings.

The past few days have brought more opportunities to wait.  My email isn't working properly, despite spending more than five hours on the phone with support technicians.  My oven hasn't worked for a few weeks now and the washer won't stop leaking.  You know the drill.

Then yesterday I got a text from the manager at Walmart who ordered 9,000 boxes of crayons for us three weeks ago.  He said the "home office" dropped the ball and never placed the order.  They have 2,800 boxes for us and are scrambling to find more.  So...do I start hitting all the stores around me to amass hundreds of boxes as I have in years past...or do I wait?

Father, we are waiting on You--in the big things and in the small things.  We wait for You to show Your glory.  We wait for You to refine and purify us in the waiting.  And we trust You for the blessing as we wait.