Waiting

Wait for the Lord. / Be strong and take heart / and wait for the Lord.
Psalm 27:14

I am not a big fan of waiting.
I don't appreciate it when I feel like my time is not being valued by others.
Yet sometimes, I must wait.

As I waited for over *TEN* whole minutes on hold on the phone, I wasn't pleased. The longer I waited, the more impatient I became, but the more likely that I was almost through to a real person. I felt compelled to wait...I needed to talk to someone to figure out how to schedule a highly important certification test for my degree. And so I waited.

As I waited for over *TWENTY* whole minutes (railroaded...again), I was mostly peaceful. I mean...I had a pbj sandwich...I had a Bible...I had praise music. I could see the caboose from where I was sitting and so I thought that it would be past soon. It wasn't. The train people backed up the train and hitched more cars to it. Two trains passed on the second track while I waited. I kept waiting. I was convinced that the train would be moving anytime now. It whistled. It gave off steam. It rocked back and forth. But there it stayed for twenty minutes. I was convinced that if I did drive back the way I came and go over the tracks at a different place, that the train would be gone by the time I reached the same place from the other side of the tracks. And so I waited.

The longer I wait for something, the more my paranoia grows. I feel like if I hang up or drive off, I'll have wasted my time spent waiting...so therefore I feel compelled to wait it out. I get antsy and want to move to feel like I'm making progress. If I'm waiting at a cross-walk and need to wait for the light to change, I'm tempted to cross all three other directions (even though it'll take longer) just to feel as if I'm doing something.

I got to thinking, as I waited, how long do I wait on God? Do I give Him ten minutes? Twenty minutes? Thirty minutes to answer my prayers or show me the way? How long do I give Him before I try things my way?

What are ways that we can improve our waiting on God?