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Waiting on God (14 July)

The thought this week has been written by Fiona Heddle Minister at Winter Gardens Baptist Church and EBA Trustee

Back in June I enjoyed 3 days on a boat on the Norfolk Broads with my husband and grown-up children who we hadn’t seen in person for an awfully long time.  One evening, during an extremely competitive game of Ligretto, our son in law suddenly stopped and drew our attention to a Heron on the opposite riverbank.  Ligretto was paused while we watched.

We could see a shoal of fish jumping in and out of the water and the Heron standing still on the bank fully focussed on the fish in front of him, watching and waiting.  After a few minutes we found ourselves saying, “What is he waiting for?  If he waits any longer the fish will be gone!”  We were willing him into action, telling him, “Now’s the time”.

The Heron ignored us, remaining perfectly still, and focussed on the water in front of him.  We became more impatient.  We wanted to see what he would do but quite frankly he was taking too long, and we wanted to get back to our game.  We wanted to be doing something rather than waiting, but at the same time we wanted to see the Heron in action catching his supper.  It looked to us like he might be too late.

As I woke up to birdsong the following morning, I found myself reflecting on this.  How absurd that we even fleetingly thought that we knew better than the Heron how to catch fish.  Our urging the Heron to ‘get on with it’ before he missed out on his supper, was based entirely on our impatience.  Although we wanted to see the Heron at work, we got fed up waiting and wanted to get back to what we were doing.

In ministry, doing something can be a lot easier than waiting on God.  There can be comfort in doing something and in continuing with the familiar.  Often others want to see us doing something and robustly urge us to ‘get on with it’ but waiting on God is sometimes the best thing we can do.

For those of us who are naturally contemplative, waiting on the Lord may come more easily.  For those of us who are activists, remember that waiting is not passive, it’s actively staying put and resting in expectation, getting ready to serve and obey.

“Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!” Psalm 27:14

By the way, the Heron caught his supper!  Will we catch the wind of God’s Spirit?

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