On Waiting for the Next Assignment

I retired from Dunwoody Baptist Church in April.  I have been busy with projects, some travel, and much introspection. And waiting. Waiting on cancer treatment to be done. Waiting on parts to come in for my 68 Camaro. Waiting on doctor appointments and test results. Waiting on the next assignment. I love DBC and will be involved as a church member. But I am waiting on the next right step (thank you Mack Hannah) in ministry service.

One of my (current) favorite things to do with my grandson is to build LEGO projects. He is incredible at it. The kits come with instruction booklets that guide you step by step, but Reid prefers to follow along on instructions on the LEGO app on his ipad. They are identical to the booklet and Papa still prefers the printed directions. MORE ON THAT IN A MINUTE...  

One of my other current favorite things in retirement is the time I get to spend in the Scriptures. Because I no longer have as many morning meetings, sometimes the time just goes away and I go into "study" mode as if I was preparing to preach or teach or write--but the delight in devotional study and prayer and contemplation is part of the healing that come in waiting. My Bible reading plan is coming up on completion of the Old Testament, which means I have read pages and pages about the exile, the mass deportation of the Israelite people by the Assyria and then Babylon.

I have become convinced that the exile is the major story in the Old Testament that allows us to better understand God's redemptive plan, but I will talk about that in another blog. I count at least fourteen OT books that either describe or prophesy before, during and after the exile. This time through those books, I kept being drawn to the waiting. We often quote Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for prosperity and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.” But if we lok at the verse in isolation, we miss the waiting. The verse before says, “For this is what the Lord says: ‘When seventy years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill My good word to you, to bring you back to this place.” Seventy years of waiting. Even after the return of the exiles, there was more waiting, which is what Ezra is about. 

Waiting. Waiting for the promise that God articulates in the verse after the promise: “Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. I will let Myself be found by you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and I will bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile.”

As I wait, I feel like I am reading the LEGO instruction booklet. First this. Then this. Build a piece that doesn’t look like it will go anywhere. Open another packet of parts. Put the thing you just built to the side. Only after you run (mostly) out of parts does the project look like the picture on the box. 

So what do LEGO builds, the exile, and my waiting have in common? The value is in the presence. No matter how confused this grandpa gets trying to put tiny bricks together, every moment spent with it is time with Reid. Every lesson learned in the exile was about God’s desire for hearts and about His promise to be there. I wrote in my Bible time and again, “the Promise is His Presence.” And that is what I have learned in waiting. He meets me in my study each morning as I try to unravel the strange prophetic words in Ezekiel. He meets me when I say, “what’s next, Lord?” He meets me when I don’t read anything, say anything or sing anything at all. 

The promise in waiting is His presence. 

Yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength; They will mount up with wings like eagles. They will run and not get tired, They will walk and not become weary. Isaiah 40:31