The Mean Time

Everyone at some point in their lives will find themselves waiting. Waiting at the grocery store, waiting in line at Starbucks, waiting for the weekend, waiting for the Avengers movie to finally come out or waiting for a beard to magically appear on your face (those last two may have just been me).
When I think of waiting the most obvious place that comes to mind is a waiting room in a doctor’s office. It is a room built solely for waiting, hence the name.
These waiting rooms aren’t very exciting; most of the time they are just filled with sick people and old magazines.
A lot of us are waiting for something more important. We are waiting for something God promised us, freedom from the things that keep us down, or that person to finally be on the same page as you.
We find ourselves stuck in a waiting room hoping that the next name called will be ours.
I have been in waiting rooms a lot, and probably will be in more, and here is what I have learned. God always has more to teach you than just patience when you are waiting on Him. I think a lot of times we get this idea in our head that we are exactly where we need to be with God, that our butts are completely covered and all we have to do is wait patiently on the Lord and one day he will realize how awesome we are and remember to overwhelmingly bless us.
I call this going into martyr mode. Go ahead and get your sackcloth and ashes and wait until you have made God look like a bad guy for not blessing someone so righteous as yourself.
Don’t get me wrong, patience is one of those things that someone truly seeking after God must learn to acquire. It is absolutely vital to your walk with God. However, there is always more to learn. If you are still in the waiting room it means that you are not completely ready to leave. It isn’t like God is keeping you in a place because He didn’t expect you to make so soon and now He isn’t ready for you. He has things to plant inside of you, He has things that only this season of wait can prepare you for.
It is all about what we learn in the meantime. Notice it is called meantime and not “happytime.” More often than not the times in between are not pleasant or enjoyable, but they can be. Most of the time they are filled with questions like “OK God, what did that do?, What was I supposed to learn from that? Now what?”
The meantime is where we find time to read old magazines.
You may have read these magazines before, even multiple times, and you thought you knew everything they had to say. Sometimes what God has to teach us is an old magazine, a re-run, something you need to be reminded of or something you have never perfected but thought you had. Our prayer in those times of confusion should be “God teach me what I do not know, or help me remember what You have already taught me.”
The Israelites wandered for forty years in a big, hot, waiting room. Sure they were being punished for doubting that God could do what He said He would but why do you think God made them wait instead of just sending a plague or wiping some of them out like He did every other time? You see, the Israelites were coming out of the pagan nation of Egypt and into the pagan land of Canaan. These people had been raised under idol worship and polytheism. If there was no waiting room there would not have been any distinction between them and the inhabitants of the land. God used this time of wait to teach patience yes, but also to weed out everything that wasn’t Him, to teach them how to live the rest of their existence, and to set them apart as His holy people. They had a lot of old magazines to read, they had to learn some lessons multiple times.
If you are waiting it is probably because God is preparing you for what you are waiting for. This would be the perfect opportunity to learn how to worship God, and not where He is taking you. This would be a perfect time to go deeper with God than you ever have before. This would be a perfect time to remember everything He has done in your life. Read your old journals, they are like old magazines.