I’ve been doing a little reflection on the concept of the waiting room that we are using for our current message series. You can find the others here and here.
Today I’d like to reflect a little on the experience the Israelites had in between when they were slaves in Egypt and when they entered their “promised land.”
You can read about their experience in the book of Exodus. Their experience of waiting tells me that NO experience of waiting I have ever had even comes close to theirs. As a people they had to wait 40 years to enter their home. Now some have waited 6 months to a year to build a home. But I don’t know any family who waited 40 years to move into their new pad!
One of the experiences that the Israelites had was trusting God every single day for their food. God provided “manna” for them each day. In Exodus 16 it chronicles for us their experience where God provided it each day and each day they gathered it. Some gathered too much and some gathered too little. But everyone had just enough. Some tried to disobey God’s specific instruction to only gather enough for the day and not try to store some for the next. When they tried, that which they gathered spoiled. God was teaching them to trust him every single day.
Like manna for the Israelites in the desert, I think God only gives us enough Grace for each day. Not enough for tomorrow, just today. I think that is to help us trust him today. The waiting room teaches us to live in the present, not the past and not the future, but today. God has only given us what we need for today.
The beauty and pain of the waiting room is that you don’t know when you will be “called out” of it. Therefore, learning to just be present and trust God in the moment is the only choice that really leads to transformation. It’s what my friend Andy calls living “momently.” We don’t live for tomorrow…for the next thing, for the next job, for the next stage of a relationship…but for now.
And God has given us just enough for today. Dan Allender in his revolutionary leadership book “Leading with a Limp” says this:
“The grace for the moment is the manna for today. There are enough problems today and sufficient grace to meet them now. There is not grace for tomorrow because the gift is now, for the moment, and not for what is to come. There will be grace for tomorrow, but it will not come today.”
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This post really spoke to me today, especially the last paragraph from Dan Allender’s book. When you here God’s truth being spoken it just resonates deep within you as this did for me today. Thank you for sharing Doug… and keep stretching yorself!