“The Lord is good to those who wait for him,
to the soul who seeks him.” Lamentations 3:25 ESV
I grew up baking like it was nobody’s business. I started with experiments, and box mixes and gradually pulled out my Mom’s Betty Crocker cookbook like it was the holy grail of all things kitchen. Eventually I graduated into cooking from scratch, and didn’t bother looking back. I never minded the cooking process….but it got to a point that I got impatient with the wait:enter the microwave.
Once I realized that I could cook things with a fraction of the wait…..I decided to pop everything in, and I mean everything. Meatballs, popcorn……and eventually even a batch of cookies.
Here’s the thing (especially with baking) after you’re used to golden baked perfection, nothing else compares. If you’ve ever had a microwave cookie or an oven-baked-perfection cookie….there’s no contest. One is like rubber, the other is actually melt-on-your-tastebuds delicious.
The difference is the process.
The gift is in the waiting.
The time spent for something to come into fruition, is time well spent.
While it isn’t easy, there is something special that happens as we wait.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the “wait” that Saturday held as God was already orchestrating for Sunday to be revealed. It must have been painfully challenging for the disciples to wait, oblivious to what God was doing. These people who walked with Jesus most, and knew Jesus best…..still had to wait for the resurrection. Think about what they endured:
How they must have feared.
Doubted.
Wrestled with what probably felt like a ocean of grief.
But, Jesus had already told them he would be with them again.
Even still, they had to go through the wait, because God was doing something in the process of resurrection.
Here’s the thing…..other than our salvation, there is nothing instantaneous about our faith. There’s no short cut, no fast track, and no instant gratification- microwave that side steps the process of our spiritual growth.
We know this. Just like we know the difference between a microwave cookie and an oven-baked perfection cookie. But that doesn’t change us from wanting to utilize the instant….and that often keeps us from joyfully enduring the process.
We’ve grown to assume that the instant is better just because it is faster, instead of submitting to the process knowing God’s way is working perfection in us just as he intends.
But God is as patient as he is wise, and he’s willing to submit us to the process until his timing is made perfect for the life he wants to bring forth. It’s about his purposes, not ours. If Jesus had to wait for Sunday, we can wait too.
We aren’t purposeless while we wait. Nope, not even a little bit. While we wait, we hope, we trust and we allow faith to have its perfect work in us. We submit to God and to the heat that the process of preparation does in us. We choose to yield and we allow ourselves to come to a place of surrender, so that God can do what only he can do. In the process, we keep our eyes on the fact that resurrection is coming. As sure as the sun rises each morning, we have a daily reminder that darkness ends, and light will come. Hope is alive because Jesus has already conquered what Friday represents, and he gifts us the hope of what Sunday holds. There is no in-between here, except for Saturday. And in waiting through Saturday, we trust that God will have his perfect work, and way in us.
Thank you God, for the hope of Easter. And thank you Jesus for the power of resurrection!
So much love,
Joy