My sons are full of questions. To them, every question ought to have a “yes” or a “no” answer. They still live in a world that is free from ambiguity.
To them everything is either right or wrong; left or right; up or down; black or white; heaven or hell. I have tried and have often failed to get them to see the subtle ironies of life.
I attempt to convey to them that life is full of uncertainty. We do not know from one moment to the next what the future holds. When I am asked a question by them, I am fond of telling them that we will have to “wait and see.”
My younger son always says that a “wait and see” response from Dad really means “no,” albeit a polite no. Of course, my “wait and see” response doesn’t necessarily mean “no.” It simply means that I am not ready to make a decision.
I have to get a little farther up the proverbial “road” before I make the decision. To make a decision at the point that the question is asked would be premature.
In a larger sense, the great questions of life are the same way. In an individual life, it is out of an initial ambiguity that certainty ultimately comes. Rather than rushing an answer, we would all do well to wait.
The answers that we seek to our problems will be the result of the mental and spiritual processes that we undergo each day. Not to cloud the issue any further, but the spiritual answer you may seek at this very moment is really not a destination per se; rather it is the process which you undergo to get to the answer.
As a pastor, I am asked many, many questions. Most of them I can answer without thinking twice because I have heard them asked quite a few times.
There are others; however, that are so specific in nature to the inquirer that I don’t answer even though I may readily know the answer. Much of life is about individual learning. Learning is the process by which we stumble on to the answers. It is through this process that we grow.
If we knew all of the ‘correct’ answers to all of the questions we would ever ask, we would still struggle with the answers because we have not gone through the process of growing into them.
What the Apostle Paul describes in the few verses of Romans 5:3-5 is a process. It is an apt description of what happens when we are confronted with the challenges of this life – which we all are.
Paul put it this way in Romans 5:3 in the NLT: “We can rejoice too, when we run into problems and trials. We know that they are good for us, they help us learn to endure.” This is a process that Paul is describing.
We are moving in a certain direction in life and problems, sooner or later, will come and block that direction. Then, like Newton’s third law of motion, a corresponding spiritual process is then set in motion. This inner, spiritual process is centered on how we will deal with the obstacle that is in our path.
Paul the Apostle knows this process well. This is why he writes that we ought to “rejoice when we run into problems and trials.” This means that we have entered a process of spiritual growth and development.
As a younger man, like my sons, I too was full of questions and desired a certain level of definitiveness about life. I just had to know certain things. It had to be one way or the other and it had to be right then. I could not handle ambiguity. Ambiguity made me uncomfortable.
For instance, if I felt like a woman was going to break up with me, she had to make her mind up that day. If she didn’t I would make it up for her because I needed the security of knowing.
There is no room for faith when we are totally in control. My friends, there is no way that we can be totally in control and yet depending on God at the same time. It is the trial that begins your journey to faith.
Life is not about outcomes; rather it is about the process. The outcome to a situation is an event. An event, by definition, can only occupy one moment in time. Most people live their lives based on events or milestones. We want to live from one high point to the next high point.
But the majority of life is not about events or high points or even low points, it is really about the process. The process can be summed up in one word: waiting. Most of life is about waiting. Most of the “events” in life are not the “big” events; rather they are the quiet moments spent waiting.
Yes, most of this thing called “life” will be spent in the waiting room. It only takes you a few minutes to get results from the Doctor, but sometimes you spend two weeks waiting to get them.
Just like a literal waiting room, we are sitting in places waiting on the outcome of various situations. It is in the waiting [when you don’t know what the outcome is going to be], that perseverance or endurance takes shape.
Most of us have a list of problems or issues in our lives that we are desperately trying to fix. As we “fix” various things, we add other things to the list to worry about and to try to get fixed.
Truth be told, most of us can’t really live because we don’t know how to handle waiting. God is observing us going through this process. We are praying to Him because we want to be happy.
God is looking at us knowing that we will never be happy until we learn how to live with some ambiguity. Yet we don’t ever want to lose control over our situation. In the process, we destroy any faith that we could ever have.
Yet it is in the waiting room that you learn about lifting spiritual weights. Ironically, once you get started on this journey, usually you can’t back up.
God is intent on teaching us how to wait. He wants to teach us to be content even when we do not have all the pieces to the puzzle. We will ultimately learn to go to sleep at night instead of staying up “trying to figure it out.”
Anyone who will find any true contentment in this life, has to first develop some comfort and ease in life’s waiting room.
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Rev. R.D. Bernard is pastor at King Solomon Baptist Church. He can be reached at 601-638-7658.