On one hand, absolutely nothing has changed.
On the other hand, everything feels different.
What does “exceedingly and abundantly more than we can ask or imagine” feel like? Is this it? Am I here? If it’s not going to be according to my expectations, then how do I know when it happens? Because this isn’t exactly what I expected Ephesians 3:20 to feel like.
Which is, I daresay, kinda the point. “If you can dream it, you can do it”… isn’t that what we tell kids? But if we can think it in our own minds, what room have we left for God to do the impossible?
What would happen if we left our imaginations in the hands of the One who formed us and went about our lives fixated on Him – the object of our faith – instead of fixating on the outcomes?
When someone whose faith you admire (and whose willingness to pour into your life with Jesus is impossible to miss) tells you that something not the result of your own strength is coming, you might be tempted to think, “Well then what’s the point? If I can’t do anything to bring about this outcome, then why do anything at all?”
No? Just me? Cool. Anyway…
What does Ephesians 3:20 feel like? If it’s not going to be according to our expectations, then how do we know when it happens?
I decided to wait. To rest. On South Beach. For a week.
But then I had to come home because my bank account and American Airlines told me to, and I was shocked to learn that nothing had happened in my week of waiting. Everything was the same except for my now-sunkissed skin.
Ok fine… sunburned skin… but it turned to tan for like a minute before it peeled, leaving me with only the bottle of L’Oreal Summer Bronzing Foam as a cheap substitute. I digress…
In the day or so of downtime before heading back to work, I did a quick mental google search for all of the scriptures I’d committed to memory which pertain to waiting. Isaiah 40:31 was the first to pop up:
Yet those who wait for the Lord
Will gain new strength;
They will mount up with wings like eagles,
They will run and not get tired,
They will walk and not become weary. [Isaiah 40:31, NASB]
What would happen if we just went about our lives being fixated on the Object of our faith instead of the outcomes?
Now, here comes a lesson on why good Bible study matters…
Based on this verse and my own understanding of the English language, I was failing at this waiting thing. My strength is not renewed. Physically, sure. But the thought of continuing in what can only be described as a perpetual season of spiritual waiting doesn’t feel very eagle-like.
I’m a crow at best, and a noisy one at that.
*Caw* How much longer, Lord? *Caw* been in this wilderness long enough *Caw Caw*
He has to be so over me at this point, and you know what, God? Same.
So let’s just do a double check here. When it comes to applying scripture, Am I doing it wrong, or am I just reading it wrong? A mastery of modern American English isn’t really helpful when you’re reading a translation from classical Hebrew. I dug deeper…
In Hebrew, the word means exactly what you’d think: to wait; to tarry. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. We have to understand the whole thing – usage and all. We can’t just stop at what’s familiar. If we do, we miss the best part. Like this part:
The word also means to gather together; to bind.
When it comes to applying scripture, are we doing it incorrectly, or are we just reading it incorrectly?
Isaiah uses this word several times in his writing – fifteen to be exact. And in nine of those fifteen instances, the implication is to look for or to be eagerly expectant, hopeful.
Let’s try this again, shall we?
Yet those who are bound together with the Lord…
Who eagerly expect of Him…
Who look for Him…
Those who hope in the Lord…
will gain new strength;
They will mount up with wings like eagles,
They will run and not get tired,
They will walk and not become weary.
Okay, Isaiah, now you’re speaking my language.
For those of us who are hardwired for activity – the ones who get. stuff. done. – waiting can be torture. I’m talking about those of us who sit on the couch watching a show while also playing a game on the phone because idle hands are a no-go.
We don’t wait very well. Not because we don’t want to, but because there’s a fear that if we don’t do it (whatever ‘it’ is), then it won’t get done. And we refuse to be the reason something doesn’t get finished.
Ours is the work of being wholly bound together with a Holy God.
A task both demanding and worthy of the wait.
Well, isn’t this a coincidence? I’m so tired of being sick. All the time spent on my nebulizer. And my lips get tired from holding that thing in my mouth. (I’ve tried the kind you put over your face, but after a couple of days, I get sores on my face.) My AM and PM treatments each take an hour. The two middle of the day treatments take about half an hour. It is a good time for prayer and meditation, but sometimes I get distracted by my phone.
And I’ve been in the hospital with pneumonia 8 times in the last year and a half. My doctor and her team know why. They’re great. But it’s complicated because of my stomach problems, which cause me to aspirate into lungs.
Now I’ve maintained a good attitude. At least that’s what I tell myself and I have few acting skills, so a lot of people would think I do have a wonderful attitude. Admirable, even.
I thought so, too. Until I went last Wednesday to get vaccinated. I thought how much I don’t want to go into the hospital. I decided to be really aggressive. I got all 4 vaccines at once. Covid. Flu. Pneumonia. (There’s a new one I hadn’t gotten yet.) RSV..
I was DOING something! I was fighting back!
Thursday and Friday were pretty much a wash. Saturday someone to watch the OSU game with me. I call these special people “people who will talk with me and not bill me later.”
Also, this person had a MA in theology! Theology, Ohio State, and no bill later.
Maybe I’d feel good enough to go to church Sunday.
But I didn’t. And Monday was bad, too.
Tuesday I called my nurse practitioner. She thinks it might still be from the vaccines.
I woke up this morning in a really bad mood. Probably the mood I’d been repressing for a long time. Because this really is sucky. I can’t even be around my grandsons because they’re always getting stuff. Today it’s that hand, mouth, etc thing.
When I came to the meditation time, I thought about a Gospel person I could identify with. I decided on a woman I call Florence. The woman who bleed for 12 years. But instead of meditating on just the touching His hem part, I thought about her previous 12 years. All the doctors she’d been to. I made her wealthy, gave her some acres, and people to take care of her acres, some chickens, and made her a highly skilled weaver and seamstress.
I also had her becoming interested in Jesus. People talked about him. She could spare some time to see what this guy was about. Probably another charlatan. She watched for trickery. She was a bitter woman. I put her in several stories. I won’t go into all of them. But I had her at the woman caught in adultery. As she looked at crowd of accusers, she saw three men who had promised her cures. For a hefty sum. What none of these hypocrites knew was that, using an underground network she’d developed, she’d made clothes for almost all their wives. Their wives wore clothes made by an unclean woman. At the edge of the crowd, she spat on the ground.
But then her eyes went to the poor woman. Naked. Bruises, fresh and brown ones, disappearing, were all over her body. She recognized her! She worked as a servant in one of those guy’s homes. She had a child, but no husband. The guy she worked for had a reputation for taking advantage of his staff.
F was carrying a package. A completed robe, to be delivered to a client. Surreptitiously she walked behind Jesus and let the package drop near Him. He didn’t look at her, but He seemed to know what it was. He opened the package and handed the robe to the shivering, humiliated woman.
Then Florence stood at the edge of the crowd to watch. Jesus really really outsmarted those sanctimonious men.
Then He told the woman to go and sin no more.
“Yeah, right. How’s she gonna do working for that man?” Florence thought.
She felt Jesus glance at her. And she got the nudge.
As the crowd cleared, she approached the woman and offered her a job. Her child could work with her.
Then I read your blog for today.
I think I’m going to spend more time with Florence, watching Jesus with her. Because I can still feel some anger in me.
Thanks, Kylie.