Jeremiah 29

I’m not the best “waiter.”  I don’t mean someone who brings you food, I mean someone who waits.  I don’t like seeing something coming in the distance and having to wait for it.  I’d rather do something than nothing while I’m waiting.  Just staying busy helps me to take my mind off the fact that I’m waiting.  Whether I’m waiting for a phone call or an email to answer a question or I’m waiting in line at the grocery store, I have to stay busy.  Sometimes I’ll pull my phone out and check emails or see what new posts are on Facebook.   Or I’ll grab a book and read to pass the time.  There’s always something I can do to keep me busy while I’m waiting.

Most of the time what I am waiting for is resolved in a day or so, but this is definitely not always the case when I’m waiting on God.  I sometimes get frustrated that His timing is not my timing (because my timing was yesterday!)  But I love Jeremiah 29.  In this passage God tells His people that they are going to be waiting a long time…70 years to be exact.  Ugh.  I don’t think I could handle God telling me I had to wait 70 years for anything.  So why do I love this passage?  Because God tells His people while they are waiting, stay busy; keep on keeping on.  He instructs them to keep getting married, keep having families, build houses, plant gardens.  We are to keep living life even while we wait.

Sometimes we rest in the later part of this chapter.  Verse 11 says, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope,” but the future comes after the waiting.  For the Israelites, it comes after 70 years of waiting.  Sometimes we know that God has promised something – to prosper us with a better job, to bless us with a spouse or children, to heal us from our illness – so we sit down on the floor and we wait.  We decide to do nothing until God moves.  We are going to put our lives on hold until we receive what God has promised.  But this isn’t what God instructs us to do.

We need to keep living while we wait.  Sometimes that means being in a job we don’t enjoy, living with the frustration and pain of childlessness, or suffering through illness, but the hope lies in the fact that God is working.  He is moving.  We may not be able to see what He is up to, but if He has promised, He will deliver.  We need to keep going to work, paying the bills, making dinner, and even having fun while we wait.

What are you waiting for?  Keep moving!  God might just be around the next corner!!

I’m praying for you!

Pastor Amy