About Waiting for the Light to Turn Green

                                                               

  

  I don’t like traffic lights. I like living in a place that I have to drive 5 miles to see the first traffic light and that’s the town’s only traffic light. Every time I drive through a city and deal with multiple lights, I breathe a prayer of thanks that God allowed me to live somewhere that I don’t have to deal with those every day.

  Maybe I’m just too impatient. (I prefer to think of it though as being “productivity driven”.) It just seems like such a waste of time to sit there doing nothing for several minutes. Sometimes I wonder, if I would tally all the productive time that I’ve spent sitting and waiting for a light to turn green; how much has it cost me over my lifetime. Maybe I could send someone a bill for all of those lost hours. I’m not sure who to send the bill to though. Should I send it to the city? Hmmm. Not going to hold my breath waiting for any money there.

  Why is it that most people call them “stop lights”, but I’ve never heard anybody call them, “go lights”. When I was a teenager, I used to ride in the same car as my brother a lot. If I was driving and the light turned green, he would always say, “green” or “go” regardless of whether I had started moving or not. (That might have annoyed me a couple of times) Years later, when the light turns green, I get this little jolt of fear that if I don’t move right away, my brother will suddenly appear in the seat beside me and say, “GO”! (Could get crowded over there if my wife’s along)

  Sometimes I wish they would install a count-down timer, so that I can see how much longer I’m going to have to wait. I sit there with my left foot on the brake and my right foot resting on the gas pedal. (As though I’ll need that fraction of a second that it takes to move my foot 10 inches) Often times, it’s the people in front of me that cause me the most amount of frustration. I think we should all hit the gas at the instant that the light turns green and begin moving as an entire line. If I could just figure out how to get everyone else to think like I do, I would.

  Oh well, maybe I’ll just get over it and drive in an orderly fashion like the rest of civilized society.

  Sometimes travelling with God is a little like those traffic lights. I would really prefer to be able to see green lights as far as I can see. I want my future laid out before me with no hiccups in my travels to make me wait. I don’t like sitting and waiting for God to make the next move. I’ve wished I had a count-down timer that told me how much longer it’ll be. I fear that I’ll be sitting still when I’m supposed to be moving.

  I’ve come to believe in recent years, that we are too impatient when it comes to our futures. We put people on spiritual pedestals because of what they’ve accomplished for God, and then start feeling impatient that we aren’t doing more. (Maybe we just want to be on a pedestal) We get more focused on what God’s plan is for our lives than we are on following Him today.

  We’re so determined to organize our lives in a way that we so that we don’t need faith. We love the stories of those who step out in faith and experience the mighty hand of God in their lives, but we carefully avoid doing anything without knowing all the results and how it’s going to turn out. While there’s certainly no teaching in scripture that pushes us toward recklessness, there’s nothing holy or biblical about a life without faith. Faith is meaningless without an expression. (Read James)

  So I’ll wait on God. “Lord, I don’t ask for the future to be revealed to me. I simply ask that Your presence go with me where ever I go. I know that traveling with You is never predictable and rarely safe; but it’s always secure. When I fail to see Your hand, give me the faith to trust Your goodness and move ahead in faith.”