The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.
Lamentations 3:25 ESV
“The only thing harder than waiting is wishing you had.”
– Steven Furtick
I heard this quote the other day and it stopped me in my tracks; well actually it stopped me mid-scroll on Instagram. Talk about pressing into someone’s paint points! There have been more times than I care to mention that I have rushed ahead only to wish I had waited….
The town I lived in growing up hosted a craft show every year; it was the kind of craft show where anyone who wanted to would open up their home and along with some of their neighbors, friends, and family display their handmade goods for sale; good ranging from baked chocolate chip cookies to stain glass kaleidoscopes! My mother and I participated in this show at our neighbor’s house.
The first year we participated I made all crafts, no baked goods, and didn’t sell nearly as much as I wanted to (of course!). However, I saw that people were buying up the baked goods at a much faster rate than they were the crafts so the following year I decided to make some chocolate chip cookies. As you probably know, when you take cookies out of the oven, you should wait for them to cool, either by placing them on a cooling rack or waiting until the cookie sheet itself has cooled down. Well, I was in a hurry! The faster I got the cookies plated and in their bags, the more cookies I could bake and the more cookies I baked, hopefully the more money I could make…. In the end, I didn’t save time as my cookies that I plated when they were too hot, cooled into misshapen lumps which didn’t look appetizing and were hardly fit for public consumption!
Years later I was still enjoying baking and we decided it was time for Grandma to teach me how to make peanut brittle! Making peanut brittle is a little bit of a tricky process… there is a lot of time stirring the sugar, Karo, and water together over low heat…. It can stand for a little bit but let it go too long without stirring and it will scorch! The thing about this process though is that it can’t be rushed… You can’t turn the heat up on high in an effort to rush it, and you can’t skip the time-consuming process otherwise the peanut brittle won’t get hard!
After the peanut brittle reaches the hard crack point the scene changes! You want your peanut brittle to be crunchy- not just hard! It should have a quick crunch to it and be light and airy (though not soft of course) on the inside. To achieve this as soon as the peanut brittle reaches the Hard Crack stage you have to quickly add the baking soda and peanuts, stir just enough to combine them, and then quickly pour it onto a cookie sheet. If you don’t do this quickly the baking soda will have depleted its magic and you will be left with a rock-hard mess.
The thing about this whole process is that while you are waiting, you are actively waiting. You have to be accurately tuned into what is taking place in the pan otherwise you will miss it! Isn’t this an apt metaphor for what waiting on God is like too?
When we are in a waiting season it is easy to think, “Well I might as well just settle in and wait on God.” and we get so comfortable waiting that we stop looking to God and forget that this waiting too is just a season. We are to be actively waiting on God, still doing the next right thing in front of us; reading our bible, praying, ministering to others, using the waiting time as a time for God to do His work in us so that when the season of waiting is over, we are ready to do the work that He has prepared in advance for us to do!
Other Posts You May Enjoy:
Sweet Recipes for This Christmas Season (for how to make your own Peanut Brittle)