Desperately, helplessly,
longingly, I cried.
Quietly, patiently, lovingly God replied.
I plead and I wept for a clue to my fate,
And the Master so gently said, "Child, you must wait!"
"'Wait?', you say, wait!" my indignant reply.
"Lord, I need answers, I need to know why!
Is your hand shortened? Or have you not heard?
By faith I have asked, and am
claiming your Word.
"My future and all to which I can relate
Hangs in the balance, and you tell me to wait?
I'm needing a 'yes,' a go-ahead sign,
Or even a 'no' to which I can resign.
"And Lord, you promised that if we believe
We need but to ask, and we shall receive.
And Lord, I've been asking, and this is my cry
I'm weary of asking! I need a reply!"
Then quietly, softly, I learned of my fate
As my Master replied once again, "You must wait."
So, I slumped in my chair, defeated and taut
And grumbled to God, "So, I'm waiting. . .for what?"
He seemed then to kneel and His eyes wept with mine,
And he tenderly said, "I could give you a sign.
I could shake the heavens, and darken the sun.
I could raise the dead, and cause mountains to run.
All you seek, I could give, and pleased you would be.
You would have what you want -- but, you wouldn't know Me.
"You'd not know the depth of my love for each saint;
You'd not know the power that I give to the faint;
You'd not learn to see through the clouds of despair;
You'd not learn to trust just by knowing I'm there;
You'd not know the joy of resting in me
When darkness and silence were all you could see.
"You'd never experience that fullness of love
As the peace of my Spirit descends like a dove;
You'd know that I give and I save. . .(for a start),
But you'd not know the depth of the beat of my heart.
"The glow of my comfort late into the night.
The faith that I give when you walk without sight,
The depth that's beyond getting just what you asked
Of an infinite God, who makes what you have last.
"You'd never know, should your pain quickly flee,
What it means that 'My grace is sufficient for thee.'
Yes, your dreams for your loved ones overnight would come
true,
But, oh, the loss! if I lost what I'm doing in you!
"So, be silent, my child, and in time you will see That the greatest of gifts is to get to know
me.
And though oft may my answers seem terribly late,
My wisest of answers is still but to wait."
Note from Sharon:
Once I read a book on suffering that
said that sometimes we must
decide whether we will love God only for what He can do
for us,
or love Him simply because of Who He is.
When one begins to understand the
unchanging character of God's goodness
--despite all circumstantial evidence to the contrary--
the decision is much more easily made.
That reminds me of a story
I got in my e-mail the other day.
A little boy came home from school and immediately went
to the refrigerator, opened the freezer, and got out a
carton of cherry-vanilla ice cream. His mother told him
to put the ice cream up; that he would spoil his dinner
if he ate it then.
The little boy got very upset. To pacify him, his mother
offered to play a game with him. The little boy agreed....and
told his mother he wanted to play Mother and Dad.
So the little boy went to the hall closet, got his Dad's
fishing hat and jacket out, and put them on. Then he went
to the living room, sat in his Dad's chair and began
clicking the remote.
When the mother asked him what he was doing, he replied,
"You're the Mom and I'm the Dad. Get that boy some
ice cream!"
The point is that sometimes we try to play God--to tell
God how he should do things, when we, with our finite
minds, cannot understand God's timing when He denies us
something that is very important to us.
