22 Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. 23 They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. 24 I say to myself, "The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him."
Over Chick-fil-a cuisine at a recent Marketplace Connection planning meeting, Merry and I talked about the "tyranny of the urgent." I believe I had just mentioned to her that I wanted to do everything, all at once, and right now. I can be like that. Out of necessity, I'm an excellent multi-tasker and can wield a mean list. On some days, this means I'm productive, efficient, and driven, if by driven you mean you can tell by looking at my face not to get in my way because I'm accomplishing things. The honest truth is that I have to really focus to stay in this moment. Focusing too much on the next thing and the thing after that means I can miss what's happening right now. It's hard to see God at work when you can't take your eyes off the to-do list.
You could probably already tell this about me but I'm a really bad waiter. Even more than a planner, I am a doer. My brain tends to turn a problem over and over until I do something about it. Finding the "off" switch is really difficult. For this reason, my plans tend to revolve around immediate action. One of those hard to face truths that's becoming clearer and clearer to me over time is that God's plans often don't. Sometimes immediate action is exactly the wrong thing. Sometimes God's plan requires a wait.
Why do you think that is? Over waffle fries, Merry and I were discussing ways to improve our blog and other social media for Marketplace Connection. Everything we discussed is a good thing, a helpful thing, something that can make a difference in the lives of people around us. Of course, we want to do it all and right now. And we could try to accomplish our own goals right this minute. If I leap into action and try to do this on my own power, the result would be imperfect, stressful, and difficult. God hasn't called us to accomplish the difficult and stressful imperfectly under our own power so instead, we wait. Occasionally (maybe daily), I need the reminder that it's not all about what I can accomplish. Just like everything we do, we want to do it well so that we will be successful in serving and in glorifying God. The busyness and the action plan seem urgent, because they are things we could execute right now, but we can't lose sight of what's really important: God's plan. He has all the pieces we need. We wait for all the pieces to fall into place. It's only a matter of time because we know God is at work. So we wait. We take steps in faith, we wait with expectation, and we prepare.
