Job was busy praying for his kids when his world turned upside down. I was busy praying for my kids when I fell asleep this morning. I didn’t intend to fall asleep and be late to a meeting, but sometimes things happen to us, and other things we do to ourselves. I’ve been trying to get into my study of Job and I realized this evening that I am just not quite there. We have a lot going on and as I told a colleague yesterday, sometimes our duty is to just wait.

Waiting though can be hard to start, hard to keep going, and hard to stop. So, my question was “How do I wait?”

One option is to keep doing what you were doing before you started needing to wait and ignore the issue. I’m sure you’ve all done this and when applied to doing something it closely relates to procrastination and all its negative connotations. I procrastinate too much. I also call it being lazy. I’ve tried that the last four nights and have watched way too much “TV” ignoring the issues at hand. I’m thinking this isn’t really what God intends by asking us to be patient, and I’ve decided I probably should not equate waiting to ignoring issues.

So in my little equation, we have moved on from not starting to going. But how do we keep going when we are waiting? In my meeting today, we discussed an opportunity extremely different from the one we are actively pursuing. The comment made was that we should focus on the issue at hand and put the other on the back burner (or at least that was my interpretation.) I like to cook sometimes, but I often end up with five things going and trying to get them all ready at the same time. We have only two big burners, two little burners, and the microwave, so I have to juggle what goes where, when, and at what temperature. (Someday I may learn to use the oven too.) When I put something on the back burner, it is still getting heat, I am just not trying to finish it, and it isn’t my focus. If I try to equate this to waiting, I don’t need to try to fix the problem, but I need to be mindful that action is coming and at some point it will be time.

I’ve heard many theories on praying and they are not generally mutually exclusive, but the two of pray without ceasing and only pray for something once seem to be on opposite sides of the spectrum. I like the pray for things once theory as I then don’t have to think about the issue again. But sometimes, the issue needs to be brought out again and again in prayer before an answer is given or the work is done. To me now, I equate waiting to having an issue that you regularly pray for expecting an answer, but not knowing when it will occur. One of the best parts of repeating prayer beyond self-improvement is the awareness of opportunities to praise God for resolutions to big issues.

Moving on to when to stop. One of the typical prayer request people share today is for loved ones battling cancer. It’s hard to pray one time about the effects and impacts of cancer and ignore the issue. Many times the result of prayers is people moving on to be with their Savior. But sometimes, the cancer lingers or goes dormant and prayers can continue to be impactful. We all have people in our lives who are being impacted everyday by the whole range of cancer’s impacts and we have opportunities to pray and serve those in need. How can we know when enough prayer or waiting is enough?

The answer lies in the term peace. Like joy, peace is a word that cares a variety of impressions that are all valid in various applications, but here I speak of the peace of heart that comes from right relationship with God. In my understanding, we can only be at peace when the Holy Spirit residing in us is at peace. The Holy Spirit is that aspect of God that takes up residence in our hearts when we accept salvation through His Son Jesus Christ. Our first stage of life is living with the hole in our hearts aching for right relationship with God. He made us and He made us to desire to relate to Him. When we seek Him, we find Him. Once we find Him, we seek peace and joy. When we find peace and joy in the chaos around us, we know that we are prepared to move on to the next issue. When we are still seeking peace and joy, we need to keep praying and keep waiting.