Pursuing Veritas

This post originally served as a message at Arise Church

If you don’t have kids or haven’t seen Wish Dragon on Netflix, let me fill you in on this scene. A boy named Din meets a dragon who can grant him three wishes, but Din doesn’t know what he wants, and the dragon hasn’t seen society for thousands of years. In this scene, Din and the Wish Dragon are doing what far too many of us St. Louisan’s do on a regular basis: they’re stuck in traffic.

I’m going to assume that none of you have ever had quite this experience—but I think it’s also safe to assume that you’ve had similar experiences of being struck in traffic with nowhere to go. Just a few weeks ago, while our family was returning from Kansas City, we were stopped on the highway for a couple of hours. We had a grand time. We listened to music, ate snacks, got out of the car for a bit, and found ourselves on a local news traffic cam before we were able to get moving again. And while sitting on the highway for a couple of hours is relatively rare, many of us are all too familiar with waiting in traffic as part of our daily commutes.

When we launched Arise, I quickly learned the best way to get there, the best alternative routes if traffic was bad, I learned when I needed to be in which lanes, when I needed to leave home, when I needed to leave work—all the things I could do in order to spend as little time as possible stuck in traffic on my way to and from Arise. But still, there are way too many times as I’m driving when traffic will slow down, and I’ll get grumpy about it. (If I’m not happy with the traffic, I’ll let you know about it with a comment or two.) In fact, just the other day, we had to wait for some construction traffic on 30 and Bree—who was sitting in the back seat and often hears me mutter about traffic—Bree went, “*sign* What’s slowing us down now?” (Which may or may not be precisely how I complain about sitting in traffic.)

Because even though living in an urban area means that we have to deal with traffic on a regular basis, we still hate to wait. I’m yet to meet anyone who enjoys waiting in traffic. Because sitting in traffic is a waste of time. It’s frustrating. It makes people angry with one another. It drains the life out of us. But there are just times that we must wait.

We’re thinking about sitting in traffic and waiting today as we continue our series Liturgy of the Ordinary. Over the past several weeks we’ve been exploring how we can make the normal, everyday moments of our lives’ moments with God—how we can transform things like waking up, making the bed, brushing our teeth, losing our keys, eating leftovers, fighting with our spouses, and checking email into intentional, grace-filled habits that point us toward God. In short, we’re learning how God is forming us into new people through the small moments of our lives—including moments where we’re stuck in traffic or need to wait.

Let me tell you another story about waiting—one that took place a long time ago in what is present day Turkey. In those days, there was no church or synagogue or mosque, there was no modern communication technology or highways. God wasn’t well known and was seldom heard from. But out of that silence, the book of beginnings records this story:

The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran. (Genesis 12.1-4 NIV)

Can you imagine hearing that from God out-of-the-blue? “Go and I will make you a great and blessed nation!” What a life altering thing to hear from God! But notice when this happens: Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran. Seventy-five! I don’t know about you, but if I had to wait until I was seventy-five to hear from God, I would assume that He wasn’t going to have much for me to do.

Abram’s age is also indicative of something else: how long it will take for the promise God is making to be fulfilled. Let me explain. My great grandfather, August Herman Prahlow, was born in 1898 in northwest Indiana and he had two sons: Don and Augie, my grandfather. Today, the Prahlow clan numbers about 55 people across four generations. It’s taken 120 years to go from one person to 55—and it would take a whole lot longer to go from Abram to a great nation.

Except there was one minor problem: Abram didn’t even have one son. My great grandfather had two sons—but Abram didn’t have any kids, let alone grandkids or great grandkids or enough descendants to qualify as a people group. So Abram had to wait. And as he waited, all sort of things happened to him. He traveled almost 2000 miles, experienced family drama, fought wars, had his name changed to Abraham, and visited with God several more times. And all the while, he waited. Finally, nine chapters later, we hear this:

Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised. Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him. Abraham gave the name Isaacto the son Sarah bore him. When his son Isaac was eight days old, Abraham circumcised him, as God commanded him. Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. (Genesis 21.1-5 NIV)

Finally, Abraham has a son! But notice when Isaac shows up—Abraham is 100 years old. He’s had to wait twenty-five years to even see the beginning of the fulfillment of God’s promise that he would become a great nation. Twenty-five years! Twenty-five years before the first shred of evidence existed that God was telling the truth! It’s difficult for me to imagine waiting that long for anything. I mean, twenty-five years ago, I was my daughter Bree’s age and in preschool myself. That’s a long wait.

And still, for the promise God made to Abraham to be fulfilled, there was more waiting to do. Abraham’s son and grandson and great grandson experienced their own times of waiting. Four hundred years after that, Abraham’s decedents waited for freedom from slavery, then they waited to find a homeland, then they waited for a king, then they waited to be freed from exile, and then they waited for the One whom God promised would end their waiting, the king who would make God’s promise to Abraham reality. The story of God’s people is one filled with waiting.

And now, as people who believe that Abraham’s descendant—Jesus—came into the world to bless the world through His death, resurrection, and offer of redemption, we wait for Jesus to return and complete His work. Abraham waited. God’s People waited in Scripture. And as those following Jesus, we wait too. In the words of Tish Harrison Warren, “Christians are people who wait. We live in liminal time, in the already and not yet. Christ has come and he will come again. We dwell in the meantime. We wait.” (LitOrd, 104)

This waiting, it forms who we are. Even the waiting we do in traffic is a microcosm for all the other waiting we must endure. We wait for that news from the doctor. We wait on that positive pregnancy test. We wait for our next job. We wait for that critical part that’s been on back order for months. We wait for our relationship with a loved one to heal. We wait for that big break at work. We wait for those results from our kid’s tests. We wait for clarity on what’s next. We wait to feel better. We wait for that difficult conversation to be over. We wait for the pain of a loss to subside. We wait.

And this waiting is hard. It’s frustrating. It’s exhausting. It makes us worry. It makes us angry. This waiting weighs on us. It drains our souls. But in that waiting, God waits with us. Like He was with Abraham, God is present in our waiting. Waiting is hard and frustrating and exhausting. But don’t lose hope as you wait. Because Scripture tells us that God is with us in our waiting.

Listen to Jesus’ last words to His disciples from the Gospel of Matthew: And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. (Matthew 28.20b NIV) You’ve heard that before, but don’t miss how important that message is: I am with you always…. The God of the universe is with you. He has not abandoned you. No matter what you’re waiting for, He is there. Jesus says, I am with you in whatever you face—including (and especially) your waiting. We wait—but God is present in our waiting. We might not always feel it, and that’s okay. We may have to develop that dreaded virtue of patience while we wait, and that’s okay. Because God is present in our waiting.

And as we wait, there are some things we can do. Whether we’re waiting in traffic, waiting for God intervene in our world, or waiting in some other way, there are some habits, there are some liturgies, that we can practice. Let me suggest three things to do while you wait.

First, look back. As we wait, we should look back at what’s happened in the past. Where have you waited before? What happened? Where has God shown up and brought you in the past? The command to remember occurs about 100 times in Scripture. God wants us to remember what He’s done in the past, because who God has been in the past is who He is today and who He will be in the future too. So look back while you wait.

This might be as simple as reminiscing and remembering. You know all of those pictures you’ve taken on your iPhone since 2007? Look through some of those and remember what God did for you then. Or better yet, take a moment to write down what God has done. Keep a journal. Or do something else to help you recall what God’s done in the past. A family friend keeps a jar of rocks in their kitchen and whenever something important or momentous happens, they write that down on a rock. And then from time to time, they pull all the rocks out to look back and remember what God has done.

Looking back isn’t just something we do individually though—it’s also something that we do communally as a church too. This is one reason for what Christians call the Church calendar, which is a yearly remembrance of what God has done in the past. Every year, the Church looks back to what God has done before at Christmas and Easter and Pentecost. The origins for this practice are the various festivals that the people of Israel celebrated in the Old Testament. God commanded His people to remember key events in their history, and so the Church does the same. The Church calendar reminds us to look back at who God is and what He has done before on behalf of His people. So as you wait, look back. Remember what God has done in the past that can give you encouragement and hope for your present and future.

Next, look around. As we wait, we should look at what’s around us. What’s going on right here and now? What people or things can I see from where I’m at? What is happening in this moment that I shouldn’t miss? Many of us are culturally conditioned to assume boredom if we’re not in front of a screen or being entertained. But if we don’t look around, we’ll miss seeing what’s really going on. Let me suggest three questions to ask yourself as you look around.

First, am I really waiting that long? Stop and get some perspective. A couple minutes here or there is not that big a deal. Getting caught by that red light is going to add two minutes to your commute—so what? You waste more time than that every day, probably on social media. It’ll be okay! You’re not really waiting that long.

Second, ask yourself, what can I be doing while I wait? Just because you can’t get to the thing that you want to do doesn’t mean that there aren’t important things to be done. Who can you talk to? What can you listen to? How can you be learning? What idea did you have earlier that you can jot down now? I talk into my phone a LOT while in I’m waiting in traffic—it’s good time to reflect and enjoy a few minutes to think about something other than the tyranny of the urgent. When our power went out a few months ago, I had a moment of panic because I needed the internet to get something done. But after stopping to look around for a moment, I realized that there were plenty of things that I could be doing in that moment that didn’t require electricity. All it took was asking myself if there was something I could be doing while I waited.

A third question you can ask is who can I pray for while I wait? (Yeah, there’s a convicting question.) Instead of thinking about my waiting as wasted time, use that time to pray—for what’s going on in your life, for your friends and family, for whatever you think needs prayer. I want to brag on one of our elders here. A few months ago, elder chairman Nick Spiniolas texted me and asked how he could be praying for me while he was at an MRI with his daughter. He was going to have a long period of waiting and he wanted to use that time to pray. Not to do any of the hundred other things that he could have filled his time with—he wanted to pray. That was inspiring to me. There’s an example there for all of us when we’re waiting: look around and consider who you can be praying for.

A final liturgy for while we wait is to look forward. As we wait, we should look toward what is coming next. What’s on your calendar in the coming day or days? What might God be preparing you for? What might be next for you in life? Waiting gives us time to get ready for what’s next, to be prepared instead of reactionary. There’s a balance to be found here, of course. We don’t only want to be focusing on the future at the expense of the present. But waiting gives us time to reflect on and consider what might be next for us. And in this way, waiting can become an act of faith oriented toward the future.

Looking forward while we wait is also a time to look toward our ultimate end. Although our lives are often filled with less-than-pleasant things, followers of Jesus know how the story ends: with God’s complete and total victory over everything un-whole and wrong with the world. Someday, everything sad with come untrue. Someday, that which is broken will be restored—that which is sick will be healed—that which is dead will be brought to life. As we look forward, we can look forward to that future: to the death of death and our ultimate life because of what King Jesus has done for us. To again quote Tish Warren, followers of Jesus “live each ordinary day in the light of future reality. Our best life is still yet to come.” (LitOrd, 109) So while we wait, we look forward to that day when there will be no more waiting, when all things will be made new.

And that’s it—that’s what a liturgy of sitting in traffic can look like. Taking one normal part of our days and being purposefully intentional, giving something we often just tolerate a greater significance. God loves you and He’s always with you. And sometimes all we need to do in order to recognize His presence is to take note of the grace He offers us in the little, daily things of life—like sitting in traffic. God is forming you into a new people—and the place of that formation is in the small moments of your life. Are you ready to journey into the ordinary with Him?