Waiting | Agricultural Grace
Week Four: Waiting is part of our story as people of God.
Agricultural Grace | A 5-Week Series
The image of a garden– sowing, planting, and nurturing seeds gives us a way to reflect on our own spiritual growth and the ways that grace shows up in our lives. Sometimes we need to be reminded that not everything is a quick fix. Growth takes time. Grace transforms. We plant seeds and wait with the truth that God is always with us.
Waiting
Romans 8:18-25 (CEB)
18 I believe that the present suffering is nothing compared to the coming glory that is going to be revealed to us. 19 The whole creation waits breathless with anticipation for the revelation of God’s sons and daughters.20 Creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice—it was the choice of the one who subjected it—but in the hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from slavery to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of God’s children. 22 We know that the whole creation is groaning together and suffering labor pains up until now. 23 And it’s not only the creation. We ourselves who have the Spirit as the first crop of the harvest also groan inside as we wait to be adopted and for our bodies to be set free. 24 We were saved in hope. If we see what we hope for, that isn’t hope. Who hopes for what they already see? 25 But if we hope for what we don’t see, we wait for it with patience.
Over the last few weeks, we’ve been working with this metaphor of planting as an image for our faith. We have the seeds of possibility. We talked about how they germinate with the promise of good news and resurrection. We’ve scattered those seeds anywhere and everywhere, as a reminder that God’s love is for all people. Last week we talked about what it means to nurture these seeds by cultivating spiritual practices. We were reminded of God’s desire to be in a relationship with God’s people, and how God will show up to replant us by streams of living water over and over again. All we have to do is ask.
We’ve done a lot of work these last few weeks. We’ve dug in the soil. Our hands are dirty. The sun has beat down; we’ve pulled up weeds and got out our watering pails. Now what?
Well, now— we wait. Today we’re going to talk about the waiting.
Waiting can be… awkward. It can be uncomfortable. It can be frustrating. We are not patient people. Y’all, we have drive-thru restaurants because we don’t want to wait for our food. Heaven forbid the person in front of us doesn’t start driving the millisecond the light turns green. Watching TV has completely changed with streaming, we don’t wait for the next episode or even through commercials. Standard shipping isn’t even fast enough these days. We need a 2-day guarantee with Amazon prime.
We live in an impatient world. We are impatient people. Waiting is often seen as an inconvenience – something to get through.
And then I think about this image of planting and harvest.
Waiting is even harder when we’ve been doing the work. We’ve been punching the clock. Putting in our hours. Planting and nurturing the seeds. We’re going to church. We’re reading our Bibles. Showing up for our neighbors. We’re doing ALL the things – and it seems like nothing is happening.
There is this psychological connection between waiting and results. The longer we wait, the more anxious we become. We begin to question if what we did was enough. Our minds start to swirl with scenarios, and we can become frantic. So we fill our time. We work to become more efficient. We do more, just in case what we did before was not enough to get the result we wanted. It is this never-ending cycle that continues to build and build until we’re desperate, frustrated, exhausted, and losing hope.
Can I just say for the record that frustrated, desperate, full of fear and anxiety won’t produce a harvest any faster, and it certainly does not attract more harvest workers?
Paul’s letter to the Romans is one of his later writings. It’s carefully considered and theologically significant. Scholars agree that it contains Paul’s more mature reflections on the Christian faith. In chapter 8, he talks about being set free by the Spirit, and how there is nothing that can separate us from the Love of God. Starting in verse 18, we get this image that all of creation waits breathless with anticipation, that we hope for something that is beyond what we can see.
“We were saved in hope,” he says, “If we see what we hope for, that isn’t hope. Who hopes for what they already see? But if we hope for what we don’t see, we wait for it with patience.”
Here Paul is reminding us what we’ve seen throughout scripture over and over again. Waiting is part of the process. A significant part of the journey of faith.
Psalm 135:5, “I hope, LORD. My whole being hopes, and I wait for God’s promise.”
Psalm 5:3, “In the morning, LORD, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly.”
Psalm 106:13, “But they soon forgot what he had done and did not wait for his plan to unfold.”
Isaiah 30:18, “Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show you compassion. For the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!”
Lamentations 3:24, “I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.”
Micah 7:7, “But as for me, I watch in hope for the LORD, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me.”
1 Corinthians 4:5, “Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart.”
God promised Abraham that his wife Sarah would be a mother of nations, but they waited 90 years for that promise to be fulfilled, before becoming pregnant with Issac.
The Israelites waited 40 years in the wilderness before entering the promised land, and then later in their story, they waited for 70 years in exile.
The entire arch of scripture is waiting for the coming messiah — who eventually comes in the person and work of Jesus.
Over and over again, Jesus told his disciples that the Kingdom of God had not yet come. They needed to wait. They would know and understand when the time was right.
Waiting is part of our story as people of God. It is part of this process and life of faith. We wait, but we wait in hope! Hope for what we cannot yet see.
Y’all, the gospel is not efficient.
It is not goal-oriented, at least not in the same way as our modern-day culture. There are not three surefire steps to a healthy faith or church or life. There is a lot more mystery in this whole thing than makes us comfortable. And this waiting requires trust. It looks like surrender — when we put aside our wants and desires in order to pick up God’s wants and desires— in God’s timing.
It means that we trust God to do what God promised and to realize that God is not on our time clock. God does not work based on our timeline. It doesn’t matter what the farmer’s almanac says.
We are to remain faithful in our planting and nurturing and trust that something is happening beneath the soil.
What we are able to see and what is actually going on are always not the same.
You see, grace is unexpected. It sprouts up through cracks in the concrete. It produces blooms in the middle of winter. It is the shade of a magnolia tree and the rain that cools off a summer day. We can’t plan or calculate or control the way that the Spirit moves. There are seasons when all we can do is wait. Seasons when we are called to wait.
What do we know about God in God’s word?
We know that God is at work in the waiting.
So when we get impatient —- and we will get impatient! We can pause and recall the ways that God has been faithful before. So quickly, we forget. Honestly, it’s beautiful when you think about the image of planting. We can look back and remember the harvest from all the past seasons. This cycle of life and death and new life. We can recall the ways that God showed up before and trust that GOD WILL show up again!
Questions for Reflection
How easy/difficult is it for you to wait?
In what ways does God show up in the waiting?
What do you think it means that the gospel is not efficient?