Waiting on God: a good thing, “a vibrant contemplative work”

Later I’d look back and recognize that I’d turned a corner with God and my husband that afternoon. 

But the fulfillment of that would take months. In the meantime, I was exhausted—drained, shattered, feeling my way through a fog. 

I could do nothing except carry out my duties like a robot, but—and this is the most important—at the same time, I was keenly aware that I was waiting on God. 

The Bible tells us, often, to wait on God. But what does it mean to wait on God? 

It’s not giving up. Neither is it being aloof. Waiting on God is not being in denial. It is not an escape. It’s not about keeping our distance from God. 

Waiting on God is not being passive, though it can involve a degree of passiveness. 

Sue Monk Kidd writes, “I had tended to view waiting as mere passivity. When I looked it up in my dictionary however, I found that the words passive and passion come from the same Latin root, pati, which means ‘to endure.’ Waiting is thus both passive and passionate. It’s a vibrant contemplative work.” (When the Heart Waits) 

Waiting on God is a deliberate undertaking, an alone time of seeking intimacy with God. Jesus did that at the Mount of Olives (Luke 22:39-44). He waited on God for forty days in the desert wilderness (Luke 4:1-13). Another time he sent his disciples away on a boat, disbursed the multitudes, and, alone, traveled a mountain to pray—all night (Luke 6:12). 

It’s a time to do what God asks of us: “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). 

It’s a time of saying, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening” (1 Samuel 3:9). Waiting on God is talking less and listening more. It’s quieting our own voice and, instead, actively listening for and to Him. 

Oswald Chambers wrote of something of what that’s like, of the person who “meets God at every turn, hears Him in every sound, sleeps at His feet, and wakes to find Him there.” Chambers goes on to describe it as the person “developing his power of knowing God,”—such a vitally important pursuit. (Christian Disciplines) 

Waiting on the Lord implies an active back and forth with God: “Out of the depths I cry to you. . . . O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry” (Psalm 130:1-2). 

It’s characterized by hope. “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning. . . .” (Psalm 130:1-6) and “. . . put your hope in the Lord, for with the Lord is unfailing love and with him is full redemption” (Psalm 130:7). 

Waiting on God is trusting Him—it’s a confident expectancy. “We wait in hope for the Lord; he is our help and shield. In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name” (Psalm 33:20-21). 

That means that waiting on God is an act of faith. 

Sue Monk Kidd writes of being in a “place of fertile emptiness” (When The HeartWaits). I like that: “Fertile emptiness.” Waiting on God can be rich with possibilities. It can be a creative time, a transformative time, a productive time leading to fruitfulness. 

But that takes time. And it can involve growing pains because it can require us to humble ourselves, question ourselves, and then reassess what we believe and expect and assume and hope for. It requires us to be content in an in-between time, in transition, not knowing how things will turn out. That means waiting on God can be tumultuous. It can be scary. 

But it can also be a sacred time, a time of the renewing of the mind (Romans 12:2), of being teachable, of softening the heart; a time of increased clarity—all of them can inspire hope, direction, and peace. 

Waiting on God can close one chapter in life and open a good, new one. 

I would later find out

that on that sizzling afternoon in Lomalinda,

standing—in my sweat-drenched clothes—

in that low, little house

that I was committed to making into our young family’s home,

listening to wind and crickets

and an occasional motorbike in the distance

and maybe a haunting whooshing cry

from a howler monkey,

God had already begun leading me to a good place,

a firm place on which to stand—

and on which to live and thrive.

He was already working to help me mature as a wife,

mother, and His daughter.

 

No, no, no! Don’t look down!

Drives through the Andes were the stuff of legends—not myths, not made-up tales, but the histories of dozens of families. (If you missed last week’s post, click on Of Andean hairpin turns: I tried to stifle my hysteria.)

Today you could sit down with anyone who spent time in Lomalinda and he’d tell you hair-raising accounts of journeying through the Andes—stories about upchucking, long delays due to mudslides, other delays at police checkpoints, and reports of filthy bathrooms along the way.

But especially you’d hear stories about the dangers of the trip. You’d hear about urgent prayers for safety.

Linda Wheeler Hollingsworth recently told me of bus trips she and her family took several times through the Andes from Pasto to Puerto Asis while, for many years, her parents served as linguists and Bible translators among Colombia’s Siona people.

Linda writes,

“The bus was usually packed with standing room only, shared with all manner of livestock and people .  . .  and to top it off, loud Colombian music with the occasional translated Cindy Lauper or Stevie Wonder thrown in. My favorite was ‘Solo Llamé a Decir te Quiero.’ [Note from LT: If I remember my Spanish correctly, I think that’s I Just Want to Say I Love You.]

“We could look out the window and see down the mountain in a fog-covered abyss. One of the dual back tires would often hang over the edge. The driver drove pretty fast. . . .”

Read that paragraph again. Imagine sitting beside Linda on that bus.

At that point in the recent conversation with Linda, her older brother, Jim Wheeler, spoke up. “That was the craziest bus ride I remember! I think we did it three or four times.

“The really wild rides were in the old chiva buses. The driver would stop at El Mirador where we had to wait on the one-way traffic to make it up the cliff/mountain. . . .

“I remember walking with [brother] Franky over to the edge of the lookout. We couldn’t see the bottom because there were too many clouds in the way, but we could look off and see the broccoli-like jungle thousands of feet in the distance.”

After waiting for the one-way oncoming traffic to finish, “the driver’s assistant would call everyone into the bus. The driver would light a candle at the nearby shrine, jump into the driver’s seat, cross himself, and then gun the engine for the wild ride down.

“We could see the wheels hanging off the edge. . . .

“What really freaked me out was looking up as we went down the switchback road and seeing saplings sticking out of the mountain on the underside of the road above us. Then I realized that [moments earlier] we had been riding on that same stretch of road in a six-ton bus!

“We could see crosses all along the way where travelers must have fallen.

“One time I was sitting toward the front of the bus. The driver’s assistant looked at me, pointed to his eyes, pointed down the side of the mountain, then shook his finger, ‘No, no, no!’ Better not look down on that trip!

“Often the assistant had to get out and guide the driver around a hairpin turn. That’s when the wheels would really hang over the edge!

“We were always very glad to get to the bottom!”

I guess so, Jim! I guess so! Thanks for sharing your stories with us, Linda and Jim.

These accounts make me tremble. 

How about you?

Can you imagine being a parent in such a locale 

and pushing hard to carry out work God had led you to do?

While contemplating that, I remind myself that God’s ways are not always our ways. “‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts’” (Isaiah 55:8-9 NIV).

His ways are higher than ours—that is, He doesn’t look at life in the same way we do.

When His ways crash against our ways, we need to do a “doggie head tilt.” (Mike Metzger: “If your head never tilts, your mind never changes.”) When God asks us to do something that seems crazy, we need to look at life from a different angle—from His angle, not ours.

Jesus warned those who wanted to follow him, saying “Count the cost before you set out” (Luke 14:28).

“Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and he turned and said to them, ‘If anyone comes to me but loves his father, mother, wife, children, brothers or sisters—or even life—more than me, he cannot be my follower. Whoever is not willing to carry his cross and follow me cannot be my follower. If you want to build a tower, you first sit down and decide how much it will cost, to see if you have enough money to finish the job. If you don’t, you might lay the foundation, but you would not be able to finish. Then all who would see it would make fun of you, saying, ‘This person began to build but was not able to finish’” (Luke 14:25-30, NCV).

Those who decided to work in Colombia had taken those verses and Proverbs 20:25 seriously: “Don’t trap yourself by making a rash promise to God and only later counting the cost.”

I believe each family that relocated to Colombia to serve God, like Linda and Jim’s parents did, counted the cost ahead of time. One of those costs was harrowing trips through the Andes, and while over the years some Lomalindians did suffer injuries, some of them serious, I’m not aware of any deaths.

In the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, our colleagues experienced much worse dangers than Andean roads, especially at the hands of Marxist guerrillas.

But they kept working there even when it was dangerous, even when it didn’t make sense.

At such times, Oswald Chambers’ perspective helps us make that necessary doggie head tilt: “Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you might not understand at the time.”

What courage my colleagues chose!

What faith they demonstrated!

And what a privilege God gave me 

to work alongside them and learn from them.

Who would bomb missionaries? And why?

I wrote the following in Chapter 3 of Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir:

In those days, all flights to Colombia left from Miami so, on July 19, 1976, our little family set out driving from Seattle, stopping in Dallas for pre-field orientation. 

Between Dallas and Miami, the Wycliffe office contacted us: The Bogotá guest house had been bombed. 

Bombed? Who would blow up missionaries? And why? 

A lot of people depended on the Bogotá guest house. While most Wycliffe personnel in Colombia lived in Lomalinda, the remote center of operations, sometimes people spent a few days in the capital city for doctor appointments, vacations, shopping, as well as paperwork for those arriving in or leaving Colombia. 

The three-story building had a few small apartments our colleagues used for those visits, and that’s where our family planned to stay—assuming it was repaired by the time we arrived—and do paperwork before traveling to Lomalinda. 

And so, on Monday, August 16, 1976, at five in the morning, the Aerocondor lifted off the Miami tarmac. . . .

After landing in Bogotá and going through customs and immigration, we loaded our baggage into and on top of a dilapidated microbus and set out toward the guest house. I continued in Chapter 3:

In traffic—erratic, aggressive, even dare-devilish—we soon learned to hang on, swaying as the van darted around cars and came to quick stops to avoid collisions. 

After countless dizzying turns, our driver pulled to a stop on a city block lined with adjoining brick or block buildings, two or three stories tall, with bars on every window and door. A uniformed guard stood in a booth in front of the guest house. I’d never seen such safety precautions in Seattle. 

Guest house on left; Jonathan Smoak photo

 The front door burst open and grinning strangers poured out in a line, their greetings so warm that I thought they’d mistaken us for someone they already knew. But I was wrong—they knew our names, and they were expecting us. When I realized their sincerity, I fought tears. 

Motioning us toward the entrance, someone said, “Excuse the porch and the mess on the first floor. You heard about the bomb, didn’t you?” 

Twelve days before our family arrived, Bill Nyman and his daughter, Melodie, had met Will and Lee Kindberg and three of their kids at the airport and set out for the guest house, part of the family riding with Bill and the others with Melodie in the family’s orange Volkswagen Beetle. 

She arrived before her father and, in what had to be divine intervention, she suggested they wait in the car for the others. 

Minutes later, around midnight, Bill pulled up next to Melodie. He, Will, and Will’s son Doug climbed out. 

While Bill searched for the key, Will noticed a package next to the door. Assuming it was for someone inside, he picked it up and said, only joking, “What’s this? A bomb?” 

At that moment, Will saw an electrical device on the package. And it flickered. It was a bomb! “Everyone take cover!” (from Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir,  Chapter 3)

Before we left the States, when we’d first heard about the bombing, I was troubled, puzzled over why someone would bomb missionaries. As I processed it, I remembered our nation’s turbulent 1960s and ‘70s when many people demonstrated against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. It was a time of widespread violence, including bombing—a kid I’d known in college was one of those bombers and spent time in prison.

So, I wondered if perhaps Colombia was going through a similar time of unrest and that young idealists had randomly targeted our guest house.

But what I didn’t know at the time, 

and would soon learn, was this:

The bombing of our guest house

was a deliberate act of terrorism

aimed at our mission organization.


God knew about the bomb,
He knew the names and faces and hearts
of those who bombed—
and would continue to bomb—

yet He sent our family there anyway.

For months and months, I’d given God lots of opportunities to impress upon me that moving to Colombia was not a good idea, but instead He gave our family only open doors and green lights.

How true it is that 

“God’s ways are as mysterious as 

the pathway of the wind.” 
(Ecclesiastes 11:5, TLB)