That gap between sitting the exam and getting the result is nerve-racking. It’s just the first of many such gaps. Medical practitioners do their bit. They test this and that because we have dizzy spells. There’s an interval while we wait for the results. We are put through our paces at an interview for a job. We leave the room in a haze, not knowing what our career is likely to be. In each case – and others like them – we wait. Uneasily.
Waiting is part of life – and not just of pregnancy. It is as much a part of life as sleeping and waking. Because we are frequently compelled to make decisions on the basis of insufficient information and then live with the consequences, tension is unavoidable. We do what seems right at the time and we console ourselves subsequently with the thought that we could have done worse.
We may conclude that life is a matter of muddling through, of learning to be content, even if we have an uneasy feeling that we are well and truly in a rut. Of course, there is always the possibility that we get a jolt of a quite unexpected kind and life is never the same again.
When Paul considered this aspect of life on planet earth, he spoke as one who at one time had nothing and at another was well provided for. (Philippians 4.12-14). He does not say he spent his time praying that things would change. He does say that he is able to face anything through One who gives him strength. That’s Paul talking about the past and the lessons to be learned from it.
Paul also talked about the future. ‘For myself, I set no store by life; all I want is to finish the race and complete the task…’(Acts 20.24) In prison he does not say he prays to be out free; rather he prays that he will be able to turn his imprisonment to good effect by providing an opening for the Gospel (Colossians 4.3).
Circumstances come and go. That is what circumstances do. We in our small worlds do well to see ourselves not at the mercy of circumstances but in the hands of a merciful and provident Creator. That is far from meaning that circumstances dominate our lives; it means that we find the strength, the patience, the capability to turn them to good effect. If we find ourselves, for instance, chained down in a job we detest, we may one day find ourselves in a position to recall the experience for the benefit of somebody else having a similar experience and down in the dumps as a result. Our unpleasant months or years, costly though they may have been, can prove helpful. Sometimes we just have to learn to wait, patiently.
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