Next! (Time to Switch Rooms)

Waiting and I are old friends. All of us have, are, and will be waiting for many things. I have waited to grow up. Waited to understand about Who Jesus is. Waited a really long time to forge an emotional connection with God. But, as almost everyone who's even met me knows, the waiting room that I have inhabited the longest is the Singleness Waiting Room.

I've been in this Singleness Waiting Room for over twenty years.  I've seen most of my fellow waiting room guests get called into the next room. I've celebrated their transition joyfully (not without envy, but with genuine happiness). I've read all the magazines. I know where the bathroom is. I know where to get snacks. I've shed lots of tears there, prayed lots of prayers there, and even had some parties there. I've met God there, grown there, become comfortable with my role there.

All I have ever wanted while in this Singleness Waiting Room is to get out of it. Yet, now that there is the possibility of my name finally (finally!) getting called, well, I've discovered that while I hate waiting, change is also very scary. I know how to wait in this room (not always well, but I understand the process). I've gained a deeper knowledge of God than I could have gotten anywhere else in my life. I know this drill. I know my fellow sojourners. I know my identity and role in this place.

Hebrews 11:8 says this: "By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going."

Abraham was more or less minding his own business when God told him to take his family and follow the Lord to a new place. An inheritance and a legacy were promised. But Abraham had no idea what it would look like, where it would be, or what would happen. Even after leaving and following it was years before Isaac, the son of the promise, was born. 

I don't know for sure what my future holds. From all I can discern from the exciting things happening in my life, God is calling my name to move into a new waiting room.  However, the room may be different, but the waiting hasn't ceased.  Is He calling me to marriage? I have to wait to know that for sure. When would it happen? Waiting for that too. How do I learn to live a life joined together with another person and God instead of just me and God? Waiting. Just like Abraham, I don't know where I am going.

I will have to get to know this new waiting room. To figure out where the snacks are, who the other visitors are, what the Lord wants to teach me now. I've long said and believed that we are all waiting for something. I'm just now starting to grasp that the waiting never ends. In Romans, Paul talks about how all of creation is waiting for the Lord to come back and to do His redemptive work:

 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.  Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.  For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have?  But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. (Romans 8:22-25, NIV).

I must trust the Lord that He will be as present and as faithful in the new waiting room as He was in the old, and that the lessons I have learned will not be forgotten. Though I don't know where I am going, He does. I must be willing to move from the familiar to the unknown so that I can see, like Abraham, what new blessings the Lord may have for me.

Game-Changer

Reading in Leviticus now, all about law and diet and skin diseases. It's been hard to find the connection between my life and Scripture these past few days. Today I'm getting a glimmer of a truth which I think is very deep, a truth that I don't fully understand, and a truth that many wise theologians have no doubt explained much better. Today I was reading in Leviticus 13, about the permutations of skin diseases and baldness and leprosy. The priests of the time would have to inspect the sores and eruptions to decide whether the afflicted person was clean or unclean. The priest would also need to know how to sacrifice to restore the person to fellowship (if they could).

During my initial reading of this chapter, all I could think was, "Ick. Don't think I'd want the job of priest back then." However, I am also reading in the Gospel of Mark, and yesterday came across the story of Jesus healing the leper. My Bible pointed out that Jesus could touch the leper and make the leper clean, whereas anyone else who touched a leper would have become unclean. Jesus is more radical than I realize. . . Hebrews talks a lot about how Jesus is our new high priest, and how He is the best and perfect high priest. I am starting to understand just how different Jesus was from the religious leaders of the day.

The priests had laws and rules and systems of sacrifices to make to intercede for the people. They had to make sacrifices for themselves. They could not touch lepers or other unclean people. If they did, a sacrifice would have to be made. Then comes Jesus--touching lepers and healing them. Touching Gentiles and making them whole. Touching corpses and raising them from the dead. Yet He remains pure and unstained. He really is a miracle--His coming changed everything.

Jesus does the same thing with my sin. He came and touched my heart and, instead of being defiled by my sin and unholiness, He, through the ultimate sacrifice of Himself, makes me pure and holy. I don't have to list all of my sins and then do the appropriate sacrifice, over and over and over. Once for all, the atonement has been made. My mind cannot truly grasp Who Jesus is, but my heart is overflowing with thankfulness this morning that He loves me, saves me, and lives in me.