As I ponder over the the times in my life when I've had to wait for several prayers to be answered, I came across this piece which brought home the point. I hope you find strenght in God as I did during your waiting season.
Joseph sat on the cold prison floor. Two years he had been there. He thought of his loyal service to the Lord, his honesty to the Eyptian master, and now his strange, reward.
He arose, his body weak from lack of exercise and long confinement. His brother's faces came to mind.
"Shalt thou indeed reign over us?" Their contemptuour laughter seemed to echo off the prison walls. Yet, the Lord had sent the dream, the Lord Has promised. He'll wait.
Abraham climbed the hill until he stood squinting against the sun, He looked out over the wide plains, the highlands and the valleys.
Countless times he had looked over this land and had believed and had waited. He thought of Sarah, her womb long since dead. Ridicule taunted him, but his face remained unchanged.
"I will make thee a great nation...."
"I will multiply thee exceedingly....... lo, Sarah thy wife shall have a son."
Turning his gray head agains the sun, he walked slowly down the hill. The wait continues.
"Mary, we must make a trip to Bethlehem," jaseph said gently. He looked at her body great with child. Mary rode quietly on the donkey. The trip had been hard, a strange ride for one who was carrying the Son of God. As they neared Bethlehem, the road thickened with people.
"It's going to be hard to find a place to stay," some one said to Joseph. But Mary carried the Son of God. Surely, there would be a room for the Son of God!
Mary recalled the gossip about her when Joseph married her.
"The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee.... and that Holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God."
The people of Nazareth had not believe that. Would the travelers on the road believe her to be the mother of their King?
"(You) shalt bring forth a son, and shall call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son fo the Highest....."Many hours later, Joseph admitted, "Mary, there are no rooms. I'll ask about a stable."
Here? In a stable? Mary's eyes, scanned the dirt floor, the drafty walls. Were would she put him, on the harsh straw? Was it truly the Son of God she bore?
She lay quietly and waited.The day before Pharaoh called for Joseph to interpret his dreams was as uneventful as the hundreds of days that had preceded it.
The day before Sarah told Abraham that she carried a child resembled the hundreds of days before it.
And until Mary looked down into the face of the infant Jesus, God's promises seemed still unfulfilled.When the heavens seem brass, and God's hand refuses to move, when each day begins and ends with no answers,
this is the waiting season. The season when one can bring great glorly to God or great shame, depending on how one waits.
"Gospel Trumpeter"
