She JourneysSample

Spring - Written by Claire Hailwood

Day 9

There comes a time in most pregnancies, usually around the time when it’s impossible to do up your own shoes, that most women will say ‘OK I’m ready’, perhaps even when they become tired of the waiting.  

Maybe you’ve not been pregnant, but perhaps you’ve stood in a queue with a small child for longer than 5 minutes, or waited for food at a restaurant for a long time when you’re really hungry? All these situations are reminders to us that as people we’re not always that good at waiting!

Ecclesiastes 3:1-2 (NIV) tells us that there’s a time to be born, that there’s a time for new things. Birth, by its design is preceded by a period of waiting. Spring, by its design is preceded by winter. In fact, without winter, spring wouldn’t have the impact that it would have otherwise. There’s something about waiting that is part of God’s design. 

In Romans 8:22-28 (MSG), Paul tells us that our expectation is enlarged in waiting for God’s plan to be fulfilled. He doesn’t diminish the reality of waiting, it doesn’t take away the harshness of winter or the challenges of life, but rather, Paul states that IN the midst of waiting is God’s desire to increase our hopeful expectation. In the topsy turvy design of God’s kingdom, the longer we wait, the more joy filled our expectations.

There was a beautiful chaos in the first few days after first giving birth to my son Kit. I wasn’t really sure what day it was because I had slept so little and I remember saying to a good friend that I was looking forward to getting ‘back’ to normal. With great grace and wisdom she counselled me not to rush, and that there was no going ‘back’. She encouraged me to soak in these days because I’d never get them again, and I’m so glad I heeded her wisdom and embraced the early days of that new season because they laid a great foundation to walk into the new with great strength.  We can become impatient in the waiting, even impatient as we see the new things emerging, being birthed, the new opportunities. We want to rush through it, to get to the stage where it is established. Even though we may just be out of a winter season, we wish away spring and want it to be summer. We forget that the process is as important, if not more important than the destination. 

Yet the incredible thing about God is that He knows too well the challenge of waiting even when there are the first signs of spring. In the waiting, in the transition, in the moving from one season to the next He wants to come alongside and minister to us. How do we live in the midst of waiting and moving into a new season and do it well, increasing our expectation of what is to come in the midst of challenging circumstances? We allow the Holy Spirit in - a powerful reminder of the power that is in us and available to us. As the season changes and the time for birth and newness comes, God gifts us with His Holy Spirit, His presence IN and alongside us, His power at work in us with the promise that ‘every detail of our lives is being worked out into something good’ (Romans 8:28).

ASK

• Where have you become tired in waiting? Are there things you’re trying to rush through that you need to embrace? 
• Where do you need to allow the Holy Spirit in deeper?
• What does God want to do IN you today?