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Dear Friend, Long time no write. Hope you’ve been well. Earlier this year, I read a Eugene H. Peterson’s book “Eat This Book.” I often heard of the late Eugene Peterson and saw his books displayed in bookstores. Yet the book, “Eat This Book” has been in my ebook device for a few years, unread. After finally reading it through, I grabbed another title of his, “Leap Over a Wall” that I bought a few years back and stopped reading in the beginning. It’s David story in 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel and the early part of 1 Kings. It consists of 20 chapters, and each chapter has a theme with David and people, such as “Friendship (David and Jonathan)” and “Sin (David and Bathsheba).” And I picked one chapter each day, not necessarily in order, but the chapter with the topic I would like to or need to read on that day. The more I read his books, the more I liked his insight and sense of humor, and respected him. I would think to myself, “I wish I would start to read his books sooner….” So I bought another book of his, “As Kingfishers Catch Fire.” It has 7 parts and each part has 7 sermons from his days of pastoring in Maryland. So, total 49 sermons. And I read two books, Leap Over A Wall, As Kingfishers Catch Fire, at the same time. One chapter from each book a day. As each chapter is short, I felt like I was reading it as kind of daily devotional books. I might share what God spoke to my heart through his books. About a month ago, there was a short circuit from the built-in washer in my place. An engineer came over and said the heater in the machine should be replaced with new one. He said another engineer would visit me the next week, but there was no appointment made on the exact date and time. I kept waiting for a new engineer’s call almost for a week. On July 31st, when I woke up in the morning, I debated as to whether I would go to laundry store, bringing a week of our laundry. Not knowing when the new engineer would visit me, but keeping waiting for his call for about a week, I was a bit frustrated. And I asked the Father, still lying on my bed and looking at the curtains of the window, whether I would go to laundry store nearby later today. I felt Him saying “Wait!” Yet, I wondered whether it was His voice or my thought. I asked Him whether it was Him and whether I should wait. Again, “Wait!” I said to myself, “Aww… waiting…. I should wait for many… Waiting is not easy…” A little bit of complaint. Then, later in that morning, the engineer called me and came over soon! I couldn’t thank the Father, enough. After lunch, when I read “As Kingfishers Catch Fire,” I came to read a new chapter about waiting (Luke 13:6~9) to my amazement! “God is not in a hurry. We are told repeatedly to ‘wait for the Lord.’ But that is not counsel that is readily accepted by followers of Jesus who have been conditioned by American promises of instant gratification. Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, one of our great modern Isaian prophets who had extensive experience with violence two world wars, wrote, ‘The greatest temptation of our time is impatience, in its full original meaning: refusal to wait, undergo, suffer. We seem unwilling to pay the price of living with our fellows in creative and profound relationships.’… God is a God who acts. … But he is also the God who waits.” Then, after dinner, I decided to watch a pingpong game of our player in Paris Olympics. I didn’t usually watch the Olympic games live, but highlights only, on the news. Yet on that day, I wanted to watch it live. I thought to myself, thinking of Rick Joyner’s conversation with the Lord, that He would enjoy my watching sports with Him. It’s not something wrong to watch and enjoy sports, and we can enjoy fellowship with Him in our daily life. So, I didn’t want to feel guilty for spending time on watching the game, but watched it, asking and talking to the Father. Then, at the end of the game (after our player won a Hungarian player), one of the commentators, a retired player, said, “The strategy to win that Hungarian player was to wait!” And I was simply amazed and amused to hear that! From the morning till the evening, I heard Him talk to me through all of these on waiting, three times. And I was thankful, as He even used the moment I enjoyed watching sports on TV, to speak to me. Later when I meditated on waiting in the living room, Psalm 131:2 came into my mind; “Surely I have calmed and quieted my soul, Like a weaned child with his mother; Like a weaned child is my soul within me.” Then, it dawned on me that Eugene Peterson would write about it in another book of his on Psalms. So, I opened that book. Lo and behold, to my amazement, I opened the exact page on this weaned child, and read on verse 3, “Wait for the Lord.” Again, the Father’s sense of humor. I was in awe in all of these. Since then, He repeatedly talked about waiting for the Lord, using Psalm 131:2. “The transition from a sucking infant to a weaned child, from squalling baby to quiet son or daughter, is not smooth. It is stormy and noisy. It is no easy thing to quiet yourself: sooner may we calm the sea or rule the wind or tame a tiger than quiet ourselves. It is pitched battle. …When Charles Spurgeon preached this psalm, he said it is one of the shortest Psalm to read, but one of the longest to learn. … It is such a minute psalm that many have overlooked it, but for all its brevity and lack of pretense, it is essential. …And that is what Psalm 131 nurtures: a quality of calm confidence and quiet strength that knows the difference between unruly arrogance and faithful aspiration, knows how to discriminate between infantile dependency and childlike trust, and choose to aspire and to trust - and to sing, ‘I’ve kept my feet on the ground, I’ve cultivated a quiet heart. Like a baby content in its mother’s arms, my soul is a baby content.’ (From Eugene Peterson’s A Long Obedience in the Same Direction) Friend, Have you ever waited for the Lord for long? Or have you waited for my new blog? :-) Have you ever been tired of waiting? Maybe you’ve waited for a week, or even for years. I pray that you and I trust He will do what He promised to do and we are like a weaned child in mother’s arms. Have a bliss! Yunee God, I’m not trying to rule the roost, |
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