A biblical perspective on waiting

“Now when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, the people gathered together to Aaron, and said to him, ‘Come, make us gods that shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’”

–Exodus 32:1 (New King James Version)

Do you remember the biblical story of how the people of Israel grew tired of waiting when Moses was atop Mount Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments?

We could learn a lot from how they dealt with such an experience, because they provided a perfect example of exactly what not to do.   

Israel’s time of waiting evolved into something very troubling.

It became a time of delay, a time of impatience, a time of worry and fear, a time of panic, a time of acting in ignorance, a time of being gullible, and a time of looking to leaders instead of to God Himself.

As soon as “Moses delayed coming down from the mountain,” the people began handling everything wrong.

They became impatient.

Professional football wide receiver Cam Phillips, who played for the XFL’s Houston Roughnecks, recently used some wise words on social media that summed up what patience is all about.

“Patience is not the ability to wait,” he wrote on Twitter, “but the ability to keep a good attitude while waiting.”

So true.

Any time we end up in one of life’s holding patterns, we should not only maintain the proper demeanor, but also make sure we’re doing the right things. If we are unwise or hasty, our actions themselves will serve as evidence that we’ve stopped being patient.

And that’s counterproductive.

It might help if we can think of waiting as a God-appointed opportunity to prepare for whatever comes next.

But if we instead become impatient, we may follow a pathway that leads to worry, fear, and foolish decisions.

In fact, worrying itself is foolish, because it imagines the worst possible thing that might happen, and then fears that it actually will happen.

Our minds don’t need to go there.

But they often do, and once we’ve embraced worry, a sense of apprehension and panic may not be far behind.

Worry is based upon what we imagine about the future, while calmness is characterized, in part, by focusing only on the things we know for sure.

When we are calm, we can make decisions based upon facts and information. When we are unsettled, we will make decisions even when we don’t have facts and information.

To look at it another way, times of worry, fear, and panic are often accompanied by a time of ignorance. In Exodus 32:1 the people admitted, “…as for this Moses … we do not know what has become of him.”

Not knowing can be hard.

And when we don’t know, we are less likely to be discerning, and more likely to be gullible.

Psalms 19:7 speaks against being simple-minded: “The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.”

In the Hebrew language, having a simple mind is akin to foolishly leaving the door open to one’s home, allowing anything or anyone to come in at any time.

In the same way, a simple minded person allows harmful thoughts and destructive emotions to waltz right in.

We should carefully guard our minds against this, as foolish advice and evil suggestions are always right at the door.

With an unguarded mind we may—like the people of Israel—put trust in a person instead of in God, and once that is done, we may seek after things that we know in our own heart are not the right way to go.

When we allow our minds to be gripped by such troublesome influences, our time of waiting—a time that could have been one of reflection, prayer, growth, and productivity—is instead an unnerving time of chaos and confusion.

In Israel’s entire time at the foot of Mount Sinai in Exodus 32:1, we don’t see any mention of prayer. Yet prayer would have been the perfect prescription at any point along the way.

Prayer quiets the mind and nourishes the soul, and puts the focus back on God, where it should have been all along.

Now would be a good time for that.

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David Wilson is the author of Growing Up With Pro Football and Learning Every Day, and the co-author of If You Can Deal With Parking, You can Deal With Anything.  Ordering info: https://amazon.com/author/dwilsonnotes   You may see more articles at DWilsonNotes.com.