The discipline to wait.

Waiting rooms are a metaphor of twenty-first century life gone wrong. Life on the exponential freeway is fast, complicated, and separated, everyone moving from or toward something in a hurry. The waiting rooms are slow, simple, and congested. The anxiety in them, however, is no less formidable than when we’re in a projectile flashing through rush hour traffic. In fact, worry and apprehension may actually weigh more in the waiting room. Here there is a group inertia that lays heavy on the occupants enduring the suspense. In this place the clocks move slower, the coffee lingers flat, everything happens in slow motion, and occasionally everyone in the room flinches in unison as the telephone rings or an announcement is made.

Nothing exposes the vagaries of human nature like the places where waiting happens. Airports, depots, office settings, long lines, doctors offices, and filled elevators ask us to do what may be our hardest personal discipline, waiting. It requires a disconnect from racing minds and the natural impulses of motion intrinsic in humans. Generally it is a forced obedience to circumstances, an interruption in a programmed itinerary, a pause in the schedule, an imposition to the do-do list. They're often ticks of dread, the clock marking anticipation of a diagnosis, fine, results, final grade, or punishment. In some cases the waiting predates some grand or glorious activity---the minutes before the wedding, the birth of a child, the pomp and circumstance of a diploma, a momentous announcement, or the fulfillment of a dream. Even then, waiting is a test because it requires endurance. Waiting may be the most trying lesson plan in learning endurance.

As mentioned many times in this space, most humans have a wait problem, a built-in impatience that relishes outcomes, the sooner the better. It's so evident out there on the mean streets right now, most of us trapped in Covid-19 isolation, stuck in a motionless cell. Watch social media and measure the restlessness. For me, the desire for movement is more than a product of our individual wiring. Sure, we are a diverse species---introverts and extroverts; positive types and negative; cool, calm and collected versus bundle of nerves; quiet and receptive as compared to loud and boisterous; and so many other personal comparatives. The guys over in the psych department will teach every personality type how to learn patience. Hallmark pretenses to the max.

My Christian worldview affirms patience as a fruit of the Spirit, that is, one of the nine prevailing evidences of living under the work of the Holy Spirit (see Galatians 5: 22-23). I'll go on record and confess that the fruit of patience is rather scant on my tree. Waiting is often hard for me. My impatience challenges my endurance. It usually happens when the discipline to wait is under-developed. Three spiritual truths strengthen my discipline to wait, truth that bolsters my weaknesses, offered here without comment---

1. God loves me and has a purpose for my life.

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to

give you a future and a hope.

Jeremiah 29:11, ESV

2. God is faithful in fulfilling his promises to me.

He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it. 1 Thessalonians 5:24, ESV

3. God is always working.

My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.

John 5: 17, NIV

When the fruit of patience grows thin because of difficult or challenging life realities, endurance is worn and feeble, causing me to throw up my hands in surrender. That's when I need the discipline to wait. Knowing that God has a plan for my life, is faithful in keeping his many promises to me, and that he is always working gives me the discipline to wait. And, waiting opens the door to endurance.

Yes, we learn the discipline to stay, and the discipline to wait.

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The discipline to stay.

God did not inspire the authors of Scripture to color-coat the realities of faith. From cover to cover the sinful nature of the human species is revealed, and our creativity in expressing it. Yesterday we remembered the joyful victory of the empty tomb. We celebrate the empty tomb because it is our source of eternal joy, peace, hope, and the promise of an abundant life. Last Friday we observed the horrible crucifixion of Jesus. Pain and suffering, hardship and trials, uncertainty, frustration, disappointment, discouragement, and a catalog of physical, emotional, and spiritual disorders are still our sorrowful life companions. Ours is a sinful, broken world. Jesus told his disciples that they would have trouble in it. Interestingly, the Bible affirms that these negatives produce endurance in us. To the persecuted Roman believers the Apostle Paul wrote---

Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces

endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and

hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts

through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

Romans 5: 3-5 ESV

The disciplines of endurance are our curriculum in times of difficulty, when it seems that the clock is moving so slowly. In personal study over the past few weeks five biblical lesson plans about these disciplines have challenged, convicted, and inspired me.

THE DISCIPLINE TO STAY

So, today we are quarantined, ordered by various levels of government proclamation to stay at home. The discipline to stay is a hard first step in endurance learning. That is because modern culture is characterized by mobility. Being on the go is our preferred mode of existence. Today we are wired for movement. Our life systems and personal freedoms give us the luxury of travel---advancement, escape, occupations, leisure, education, personal aspirations, and many other catalysts push us to new levels of activity. To stay is to resist these inner compulsions and habitual routines.

Dr. Luke recorded the last command Jesus gave his disciples. Make note---

But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.

Luke 24: 49, ESV

It may have been a very difficult assignment, to stay in Jerusalem. Surely Jerusalem was a dangerous place for them. The Roman legions and Jewish population had been ignited by Jesus and the disciples, resulting in his painful, and public execution. On the third day he had risen from the grave, just as he had told them. Rumors and fake news had them all concluding that Christ's followers had stolen his body. They were no doubt tempted to escape to the Galilee. But, Jesus commanded them to stay. And, they did.

Luke wrote more about it in his second volume, the Acts of the Apostles.

And while staying with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait

for the promise of the Father,

Acts 1: 4, ESV

Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem,

a Sabbath day's journey away. And when they had entered, they went up to the upper

room, where they were staying.

Acts 1: 12-13, ESV

Luke marked their obedience and noted that they were staying in a place known as the upper room. Their obedience moved them to find a safe place to stay.

Enduring hard and difficult times often generates our escape mechanisms. Staying in place can seemingly heighten our fears or become a challenging obstacle to enduring. Today we are still, after many weeks, cautioned to stay home. And, staying is awkward for mobile Americans.

Of course, Jesus is our model of endurance. He endured the cross for the joy set before him (see Hebrews 12: 1-2, ESV). The Hebrews passage concludes that we are to "run with endurance the race set before us" (verse, 2). Doing so is first learned in the lesson plan of staying.

The discipline to stay is a first step of enduring. Here's praying that we learn it soon.

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Up.

Several years ago a man of Jewish faith asked if he could travel to Israel with our next Holy Land tour group. As we talked about the trip he mentioned that it was his hearts desire to "make aliyah", that is, to ascend to Jerusalem. I had studied the Hebrew concept of "making aliyah" and knew that millions of adherents to Judaism moved to Israel every year. "Aliyah" is the English transliteration of the Hebrew word meaning "ascent", a verbal description of "going up" to the Torah or the Temple Mount. Every Jewish person was challenged to either physically move to or visit Jerusalem, or submit to the laws and precepts of the Jewish Torah. At his old age his determination to "go up" to the Holy City inspired and challenged me. All of us should should seek to move our spiritual lives to another level. Moving to higher ground should be a life goal.

"Going up" to Jerusalem was a geographical challenge as well. Jerusalem is approximately 2,500 feet above sea level, 1,000 feet higher than Nazareth in the North, and 3,700 feet higher than Jericho, just 17 miles south. The first time our group traveled from Jericho to Jerusalem we were all startled by the rugged, mountainous climb. In the Jewish system Jerusalem was the pinnacle of most life pursuits. The visible image of it's vaulted setting certainly made the idea of "going up" spiritually a vivid goal.

Jesus was determined to "go up" to Jerusalem. In his tracking of Jesus' journey to Jerusalem Luke made note of their "going up".

And taking the twelve, he said to them, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and

everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished.

Luke 18: 31, ESV

And when he had said these things, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.

Luke 19: 28, ESV

Certainly his passion for reaching Jerusalem gave he and the disciples the courage, strength, and determination to endure the hardships of the journey. But, there is even more about the "up" references. Right up front Luke had identified another "up" distinction. He had written---

When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.

Luke 9: 51, ESV

Many have interpreted the "taken up" reference in this verse as descriptive of his coming ascension to heaven, after the resurrection. In the context of Luke's account, however, it must apply to his being "taken up" on the cross in death. Jesus was intent about arriving in Jerusalem. He was purposeful and passionate as well about his being lifted up on the cross in death for mankind. The Apostle John had written it as well---

And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.

John 12: 32, ESV

Today is Good Friday, the day when millions of Christians world-wide remember his death on that cross in Jerusalem. It was his passion to go there---both Jerusalem and the cross---because it was the will of his Father in heaven. Remember what he said---

My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work"

John 4: 34, NIV

And, on that Good Friday, more than 2,000 years ago, from that cross he had said, "It is finished" (John 19:30, ESV). His passion took him "up", and we are the beneficiaries of his truth and grace. You see, that Jesus went "up" to Jerusalem, and was lifted "up" on the cross are not the final "up" in Luke's record of Christ's passion. In his second volume, the Acts of the Apostles, he wrote Peter's words on the day of Pentecost---

This Jesus God raised up and we are all witnesses.

Acts 2: 32, ESV

Up to Jerusalem. Up on the cross. And, up from the grave. Glory! I'm praying his passion will produce some resolve and determination in me to live "up" to his example.

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