"My Whole Being Waits"

1 Kings 9:1-10:29

Acts 8:14-40

Psalm 130:1-8

Proverbs 17:2-3

"I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in His word I put my hope."

Psalm 130:5

Every story...every novel, every movie, every Bible character...has seasons of boring. Seasons of waiting. Seasons of..."where is this going?"

I think those parts of the story have got to difficult to portray artistically. I think of Jo in Little Women (spoiler alert). Louisa May Alcott does a great job explaining it to the reader, the waiting. It's after Beth dies and she's grieving. Her other sisters have all moved on to something...Meg is married and has babies...Amy is pursuing art in Europe. And Jo is stuck at home. It didn't bother her before because her task was caring for Beth, but now that Beth is gone she wonders what is next..."where is this going?"

It's then when her mother tells her get out, to see the world a bit. She goes to be a governess in New York and to really start pursuing her love of writing. She meets her husband. Slowly and surely she finds her path.

Bible stories are so short. The Bible is long but each character's story is so briefly talked about we don't often really see these seasons of waiting clearly. There is often a brief sentence about it and we have to try and imagine it a little. It's why I love Christian novels that try and give Bible characters more personality and emotion... because these are real people. And real people come with seasons, emotions and personalities that require novels rather than brief chapter-verse-just-hitting-the-highlights accounts. King Solomon, the queen of Sheba, Simon the magician, Philip the apostle, the Ethiopian enunch...all these characters have long novel stories but there are given a chapter or loosely written chapters at the most.

But the Bible is not a novel about Bible characters. The Bible is about God and God, first of all, is a brilliant author. The Author of life. He has written all the novels, all our novels.

And next of all, God's novel is the meshing, the summation, the totality of all our novels. Every Bible character, you, me, every nation's history, everyone we meet, everyone. The Bible is about the big picture because God is about the big picture and God has intentionally created every detail, every tiny thing to make the big picture.

In my life, since graduating college, I feel like I'm in that awkward waiting season. Like Jo. Wondering "where is this going?" To the "reader" maybe it's obvious. To the author it certainly is. But to me it's awkward and I see hints of it show up but then I get impatient, "but where is this going!?"

But God has it all worked out and I don't need to figure it out. It's a hard place to sit. But I can indeed just sit. Because it is God I put my trust in.

"I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in His word I put my hope."

Psalm 130:5