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We live in a fast culture.  We want everything and we want it right now.  Pull your car up to a window and get an entire meal for your family in less than two minutes.  We can get 100 Mbps internet in our home that allows us to download an entire high definition movie in 2 minutes.  Smart phones allow us to have instant communication with anyone in anyplace whenever we feel like it.  Entire libraries worth of information are at our fingertips as we sit at a downtown bus stop.

Because of these blessings, we have become an impatient people.  We have little time for those who might slow us down.  Driver stranded on the side of the road with a flat tire?  No time to help when we are already late for work.  Just need to stop into the store to pick up a couple things?  Delayed three minutes because a 70 year old woman has 12 items in the ten-items-or-less express lane...and she's writing a check!

It is especially frustrating to have to slow down when you've got every minute of your next two months planned out and God has a different plan.  It reveals what's in my heart when I am impatient with others throughout my day, but it really shows my lack of faith when God tells me to wait and I can't sit still and trust Him.

Right now I see a hundred things that need to get done in the next few months to get settled in to our new life in Minneapolis.  I need to find money to pay for everything.  I need to find a part-time job.  I need to find a home to live in.  I need to figure out how to get moved up there and when would be the best time.  I need to get some books, and maybe a new computer.  I need to pass a Greek exam.  There are details of each of these things that I am ready to get going on figuring out.

I've said before that I am a planner and a doer.  I see what needs to be done, formulate a plan, and work hard to achieve excellent results.  So when God tells me to wait, it is hard for me to sit still.  I feel like I am wasting time.  I feel like I'm ready to start the game, but the computer is slowly stretching that little bar across the screen saying, "Loading..."

Sometimes life is "hurry up and wait."  For one entire summer, Molly and I prepared for our adoption.  We read all the required books, took the training courses, and finished our home study in near record time.  And then we waited for two years for God to bring us our son.  We scrambled for a few weeks to get our house ready to be put on the market, and now we wait for God to bring the right buyer.  We are within days of our baby being born.  Everything is set up to be ready for her arrival; kids have a place to stay for a couple days, house ready to be shown while we are out, the bags are packed for a couple days in the hospital; and now we wait.

It's hard to wait when I see all that needs to get done, but I too easily forget that God is sovereign over every detail.  I too easily get focused on the next step that I forget to be content with where I am right now; to enjoy this very moment.  God has been so good to me up to now (obviously better than I deserve since I continually doubt His good providence), why should I question His ability to provide for all that needs to be done as we take a step of faith in order to know Him better?

These words from Jesus need to be stapled to my forehead to remind me daily that He is good and He will provide what is necessary for my obedience:
“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."