It’s 9:00 Friday morning and like everyone else around me I’m counting the hours until Hurricane Florence hits. This storm is so unpredictable that nobody really knows where it’s going or how much destruction it will cause when it gets there. The only thing any of us knows for sure is the anxiety that goes before it. Waiting like this can drive you a little crazy.
For the half million or so who live on the North Carolina and South Carolina coasts, the waiting is over. Florence is pounding onto land at this very moment and those in her path are even now battling wind and water. Many are in desperate circumstances. We should pray for them now and be ready to help in more physical ways soon.
Here in Lexington, though, we’re in that awkward and ominous moment when we’ve done all we can do to get ready and there’s nothing left to do but wait.
One of my neighbors and fellow church members found a creative way to use the time. He took one of those hurricane tracks that every news outlet spits out by the hour and charted the latest projection of Florence’s path. It led directly over his house, which happens to be two blocks from my own. He might as well as have drawn a big bull’s eye over our subdivision. If I don’t make it to church Sunday, will somebody come find me? I’ll be sitting on the pile of rubble at the end of the first cul-de-sac on the right.
The Weather Channel has been doing it, too. One of their attempts to bridge the gap between official updates was to bring in Elmo, the well known Sesame Street character, to explain to children why they needn’t be afraid of hurricanes. At least, I think that’s what was intended. It turns out that describing hurricanes is beyond the capacity of television puppets with creepy voices. By the time Elmo was done I was more scared than I’d been for days. I can’t imagine how children in the storm’s path might have responded. The show’s producers must have felt the same way because Elmo hasn’t been back.
I saw another way people found to occupy the time at church yesterday. I was walking through our Family Life Center when I heard a commotion in the gym. A large group of children of all ages was running up and down the basketball court screaming and laughing. They appeared to be playing a game that resembled basketball, although it was hard to tell. School was cancelled earlier in the week, and the wise collection of moms sitting on the bleachers had brought their kids to church and turned them loose so they could burn up energy before being locked down for the duration of the storm.
But waiting isn’t just for those in the path of a hurricane. The Bible describes the experience of waiting in a much more positive way. It’s in fact the fundamental experience of anyone seeking a relationship with God.
The famous call to courageous living that’s found in Psalm 27 concludes with the encouragement to “Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!”
Psalm 130:5-6 ties the experience of waiting to the larger theme of hope. “I wait for the Lord,” the psalmist writes, “my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning.”
And in one of the best loved verses in Scripture, Isaiah 40:31 says, “But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”
Looking at waiting in a more biblical way is a reach for some of us right now when it has such anxiety attached to it. The threat we face is real and it’s a reasonable response to be concerned about what might happen when a hurricane is bearing down.
But that’s not the whole story.
The experience of waiting is by itself neutral. The circumstances around the waiting are what fill us with either anxiety or hope. Our invitation as the storm approaches is to keep in mind the God who’s in control of all the storms of life—physical, spiritual and everything in between—who promises to never leave us or forsake us. When we wait on him, we’ll never be disappointed.