Houston is known for being a concrete jungle with masses of people and mazes of highways, but there’s one particular stretch that I enjoy just after dusk.
It’s the northern intersection of Interstate 45 and Beltway 8, two main highways that connect close to Houston’s main airport.
When you look at the northern sky from the bridge on a cloudless evening in Houston, you’ll often see plane after plane dotting the night sky.
You might easily count half a dozen or more airplanes in near perfect rows, waiting in a holding pattern for their turn to land.
One interesting thing about holding patterns is that it looks like the planes aren’t moving. They are just bright lights on the horizon, steadily shining and presumably doing nothing.
But that’s just an illusion. Those planes might be waiting to land, but they are hardly standing still. According to Wikipedia, planes in a holding pattern could be going as fast as 250-300 mph.
As I watched the planes on Sunday night, I thought about how our lives are often similar.
It may seem from our view on the ground that nothing is happening and we’re standing still, but our job is to keep moving and obey the instructions of the One who can see the big picture.
It’s easy to think of waiting as a time of doing nothing while anticipating that something more important will soon begin.
We “kill time” while waiting for the next big thing to appear.
But we forget that God is clearly showing what He wants us to do today with our whole hearts without focusing on what will come next.
We may be uncertain about what to do next week, next month, or next year, but God promises to give us a lamp for our feet and a light for our path. (Psalm 119:105).
A lamp doesn’t illuminate the path for a mile down the road. It illuminates the next step ahead of you. And when you obey and move forward to that step, God’s light then shines on the next one, and on the next one, and on the next one.
Waiting isn’t about standing still. Waiting is about obedience.
Waiting is trusting God that He’ll show you the next step in His perfect timing…and in the meanwhile, it’s obeying Him to step forward on the path that He’s already clearly illuminated.
So the next time we’re tempted to think that we’re stuck waiting, let’s try to remember that we are also doing the most important thing we could be doing:
Obeying.
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