Just Wait

“I waited patiently for the Lord; He turned to me and heard my cry.” Psalm 40:1

Waiting, being still, is much more difficult than walking and moving forward. Waiting requires patience, which is not my strength. In this past week, I have had several reminders of the importance of waiting within the processes of nature.

Being married to an master gardener, I have learned by his instruction, the value of waiting. There is a massive white flowering Clematis vine smothering a corner iron archway in the yard. For months, that vine has been void of any life…frustrating my desire for vivid white blossoms full of life and fragrance. “Be patient.” he has often reminded me. And he was right. In the past few days it has exploded with thousands of blossoms and flooding the area with sweet fragrance.

A discussion with friends this week reminded me of the beauty and delicacy of butterflies. Forced openings of caterpillar cocoons, usually by impatient observers, cripples the butterfly from finishing the critical final stages of hatching. In the final stage of hatching, excessive weight from their bodies, which enables them to take flight, is forced into the wings. The meconium (fluid in the body) is a metabolic waste that accumulates in their intestines and butterflies need to remove it to start the new phase of life. Added weight in their bodies needs to be “squeezed” into the wings or they cannot take off after hatching. If this final process is not allowed to naturally be completed, the wings cannot be strengthened, leaving them crippled and unable to fly ensuring an early death.

It is fine to know that God builds hedges around His people when the hedge is looked at from the viewpoint of protection. But when the hedge is kept around one until it grows SO HIGH that you cannot see over and wonder whether He is ever going to release you out of the “fence…” …we doubt. We become frustrated. We fear we have been forgotten and abandoned. Our impatience and insecurities “cut through” the protective cocoon God has placed us in. How often we forget…God has a purpose in all His holdups.

In the margin of his Bible, George Mueller made the notation…“And in the Stops Also.” It is a sad mistake for us to break through God’s hedges. To cut through our protective life cocoons. Forced progress takes us out of His protection and cripples God’s perfection of progress.

“It is the grandest life “having done all, to stand.” J. R. Miller

Rest today in the hedge surrounding you.

And remember…

I’m Listening.