While You’re Waiting
“Now while Paul waited…”
Acts 17:16
One of my recent blogs was about waiting but the subject has come up again in my thoughts and I’d like for us to take another look.
The truth is we probably spend most of our lives waiting.
There is always something we’re waiting for. We get up on Monday knowing that on Wednesday there’s this event happening that we will need to attend and then there’s the weekend and that family thing going on and then there’s next week…next month…vacation…that business trip…Christmas…and on and on it goes.
Seems like we’re always waiting for something that’s coming soon or someday.
And then there’s all the “little moments” of waiting. Red lights, checkout lines, digesting our stomach while waiting on the waitress to take our order (or worse yet…waiting to pay for food that really wasn’t all that good). We even have rooms for waiting – we call them “waiting rooms”.
Nothing like sitting in a room full of sick, grumpy people who don’t want to be there waiting your turn to see the doctor who, truth be known, probably doesn’t want to be there either.
And if waiting to do what we want or need to do is not enough, we also spend countless hours waiting on others.
That is what Apostle Paul was doing (see verse above). He was waiting for his colleagues to come and join him in Athens.
But while he was waiting Paul decided to do something.
He began to look around, observe, ask questions and before you know it he got a chance to give the equivalent of a TED talk at the most prestigious venue of his day – the Areopagus.
The reason this happened was that while he was waiting, Paul stayed on mission. He didn’t forget what it was he was living for.
Like the Apostle Paul, you’re living for something. During those moments and seasons of waiting, a good question to ask is, “While I’m waiting, what is the most productive thing I can do towards the mission?
The ONE THING for today: You don’t always get to wait on purpose, but you can wait with purpose.
Photo by Product School on Unsplash
