Waiting and Walking

It has long been my practice to not give into a certain type of chronological snobbery, but to read old as well as new books. One of the Old books that I have been reading recently is called Communion With God. This man had twelve children only one who survived to adulthood and she a beutiful daughter named Esther died at age 22. No man can say they know tragedy like John Owen did. Yet his books have no cynicism about them. How does a man live through that and not only live but overcome.

So given this knowledge about Owen it surprises me to read things like this. "It often happens that when all our searchings have not brought us to him we are left to wait silently for him and to walk humbly until he appears." The word, "Often" is surprising. To think of a man who wrote so prolifically and was so close to God, say that often he sought and did not find immediately. He had to wait. What make me more angry than waiting! I am not sure. But who are we to command God to be on our schedule. Life in the Kingdom can be described with many motifs; i.e. Joy in God, Life in Christ, and Hope in the resurrection. But I was impressed with the need to add one to that; "waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God(2 peter2:12)"

I know there is something deep and profound about this discipline of waiting. I think it says something very clearly about the creature creator distinction. We honor the Lord as exactly that the Lord. The one who does his own bidding on His own time.

I do not have much more to say about this at the present time only that I think some harmful trends of religious pragmatism may be avoided if we learn to wait on Him instead of seeing him as waiting on us. I also think there is an insight into the nature and mysterious work of the Spirit and more broadly the trinity as it relates to the believer.