I remember when I was a boy and my parents told us that we were going on vacation that the hardest thing to do was to wait until the day came for the vacation to start. It seemed like years would pass before we began to load the truck and hook up the camper. I am sure we asked several million times if tomorrow would be the day we were leaving. Needless to say, we were not really good at “waiting.” I must admit that I am still not that good at waiting. I tend to want God to act very quickly and get to what He is going to do. However, I have found that there is great value in the waiting times.
Don’t misunderstand me, I still don’t enjoy waiting, but I have seen that God has taught some very valuable lessons to me during the waiting times. Today I was reading Proverbs 8 where wisdom is speaking to each of us. Two verses that touched my heart were these: “Blessed is the man that heareth me
[wisdom], watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors. For whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favor of the LORD” (Proverbs 8:34-35). I noticed that there are two very important parts of us finding true wisdom. We need to watch for it and we need to wait for it as well.
That means that we need to be on the “look-out” for wisdom. We need to give effort to finding wisdom and incorporating it into our behavior. I am asking God today to help me to keep my eye opened for true wisdom, and then for the ability to apply it to my heart and life. Our world today is constantly bombarding our senses with nonsense and unimportant idea’s. I want my heart to be so in tuned to God’s wise words, that I can see the difference between the waste of time idea’s and the words of wisdom.
The other thing that we are challenged to do is to wait for wisdom to show up. Far too many times, I have rushed into something before wisdom showed up. I want to develop the discipline of waiting on the Lord. I don’t want to make two wrong moves before realizing what the right move should have been. I want to keep my eyes opened for wisdom, and I want to wait for that wisdom before I act. As a small boy, I had trouble waiting and watching. As an “older” man, I still have trouble doing these things. As I get older, I can see more and more how often I have missed the “best” opportunity because I jumped too soon at a “good” opportunity. Wisdom will show up if we can watch and wait for it! Today is a good day to patiently depend on God’s perfect timing for wisdom.