Call Waiting

[shepherdleader]

No one likes being put “on hold”? Especially when the other person has initiated the call. Why call if you have something or someone else more important to deal with? We’ve never added the “call waiting” option on our phones, but recently the service became automatic. I confess that I now look at incoming call numbers and occasionally put someone on hold. Yes, even someone I’ve called in the first place. While I’d never condone the habit, I have realized the value of call waiting. Sometimes I’m trying to juggle several projects that are interrelated, and information from an incoming call may affect the current conversation. Sometimes it really is important that a person waits.

During the Christmas season familiar biblical figures repopulate our imaginations: Zechariah and Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph, Simeon and Anna. And, of course, the shepherds. They were, like most Jews, waiting. Though Scripture tells us that Christ came “in the fullness of times” (Gal. 4:4), Israel was a community without such eternal perspective, put on hold in the forge of waiting and wondering. For four hundred years wondering if Anyone was on the other end of the line. Was God intentionally quiet, working on “related projects,” or had He forgotten the call?

The anxious wondering of the faithful has striking biblical precedent.

An earlier Israel was also put on hold for four centuries. Spiritually disintegrating in Egypt, ancient Israelites questioned where the God of their ancestors was. Hadn’t YHWH made promises to Abraham? Yes, He had. Promises that included a call to be at the center of God’s international mission. But God’s people were, for purposes known fully only to God, put on hold.

Abraham himself experienced call waiting. Only after responding to God’s dramatic call was he informed that generations would pass before the full blessings would arrive. One reason for the long wait: “the sin of the Amorites is not yet complete” (Gen. 15:16). Apparently there was a related and interconnected divine project, broader in scope than the call of this man. And the maturation of Abraham’s faith was woven into the divine plan. He became a spiritual sojourner in a precarious solitude, “not knowing where he was going” (Heb. 11:8). His heavenly Shepherd broke the silence only rarely during the hundred years between Abraham’s first call and his death. It was apparently a perplexing silence, one that drove the patriarch at times to engineer his own solutions. He went to his grave with a call on hold, with virtually nothing in hand except a hope that sometimes failed him. He was buried next to Sarah in a cave he had purchased, ironically, in “the Promised Land.”

Abraham’s descendents living in the times of Egyptian or Roman rule – or in the 21st century – cling to promises and calling that easily fade into questioned memories. Like our forebears, many of us sojourn in silence, waiting for a conversation to resume, for God to speak once again. This month’s word of encouragement is dedicated to those spiritual shepherds who haven’t heard God speak for a long time. Shepherds I’ve spent time with who used to have clarity of direction but now, like Abraham, “don’t know where you’re going.” Wondering what to do without the Shepherd’s leading. We have no control over when God will reengage us explicitly. Living in that liminal zone of spiritual call waiting requires the daily discipline of hope – resisting despair which knocks incessantly at our door. May God give you the grace to wait with hope until He appears again.

He will. In His time.

“I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in His word I put my hope.” (Ps. 130:5)

Tim Laniak

[Margaret]

I love your metaphor. How wonderful it is for us to know the shepherd who leads even though we do not necessarily know at any particular time where he is leading. How wonderful also to have the mind of Christ. Like a bride who knows her betrothed and waits eagerly and expectantly for his return, we know what our beloved would be doing were he here, we know what he has given us to do, and we are to be about his business. As we work to procure justice and right wrongs, to tell others of the one whom our soul longs for that they too may know him and worship him, we are growing in grace and mercy and becoming like our beloved When he does return he will be pleased and we will be ready. May the spirit and the bride say 'come.'
_________________
mdoll

[malcorn33]

I must admit that I am not a fan of waiting. I want things done now. I want things to be made clear now. I don't like uncertainty and grayness. I want clarity and black and white. I think this is why God so often puts me in these places of waiting.

As a shepherd of people, I am used to leading the flock and not waiting on anyone. I am the one who leads and I don't have to wait on anyone, or do I?

I must remember that in addition to being a shepherd I am also a sheep. I am a sheep in God's fold and He is the one I look to for leadership and guidance. Too often I only think of myself as a shepherd and forget that I am called to be a sheep as well.

I find myself currently in a place of waiting. I feel certain that God has a new direction and calling for me, but He has not yet revealed it. At times, I want to force things to happen and to take the lead to make them happen. Other times I see God's work on and in me as He forces me to wait for His timing and His open door.

I wonder if sheep (REAL sheep) ever question their shepherd and wonder what he is doing or when he is going to move them. I'm guessing they don't. I do. Is it a lack of trust? Is it self-reliance? Is it selfishness? I don't know, but I trust my Shepherd will teach me.

I wish my Shepherd didn't make me wait. However, in the waiting I believe He is teaching me to trust and wait on Him. I need to remember that I am a sheep before I am a shepherd.