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Who of us could claim to have had a fulfilling, active, adventurous year? How many of us feel like we have done our greatest work yet, these past few months? The select, optimistic few who do and upon whom eternal sunshine seems to fall are only that – a few, while the rest of us sit staring out of our windows at the grey clouds that crowd the horizon. The New York Times tells me I’m not depressed. At least, not yet. I’m merely “languishing” because I don’t feel hopeless. I’m eager, ready, willing and wanting to go but God would rather have me sit around. Languishing. I’m not the only one I know of who sits on an expectation, a promise, a call from God - one that I feel fully ready to take by the horns. But God would have me wait on the side-lines wondering if the bull is just not ready for me yet.
The words “those who only stand and wait” have been ringing in my mind for a while now. I decided to pause my languishing and look it up just this morning. In his poem “On his blindness,” (the last lines of which happen to be the words that were on my mind) I can hear Milton too, languishing like me. What does God expect of a man fully ready and willing but is being held back, he wonders.
In my sorrow, a few days back, I mused, “I’m only a pawn in God’s hands.” Like Milton, I realized that He has no need for me or my self-glorified talents and capabilities. He could, should He choose, use this pawn to play a role in His plans for eventual victory or He could choose for it to be relegated to the corner of the board, unnecessary. I expected to feel insulted by this thought, but surprisingly, didn’t. For the foreseeable future I remain a potentially unnecessary pawn in the hands of a good God. As strange as it is, that’s ok. Unseen by me, the game still goes on and I have a feeling I’m on the right side. And perhaps, while I wait in my corner of the board, I am changing.
The many men used by God in the Bible too had days, months, even years that the Bible has nothing much to say about. We know little of what it was like for Paul, set apart since birth and called to preach to be sitting in the Arabian desert for 3 years or for Moses to desire to set his people free and spend the next 40 years herding cattle or for Joseph or the disciples or the countless others, to just sit and wait and to not be able to see how anything the Lord put in their hearts will ever come to be.
I wonder if we must first learn to sit around by faith or as Milton would have put it, ‘to stand and wait’ by faith, in order that we might one day also walk by faith and not by sight.
If you were encouraged by this post and would like to read more on this, check out the second part - Sit Around by Faith, Continued...
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