Sitting inside a classroom is something I always dreaded.
One friend said, “I can’t sit to save my life.” So, if I can’t sit still for an hour or two, how in the world would I manage a 26-hour train ride to LY city confined to a bench shared by three people?
Well, I don’t have to sit the entire time but what else is there to do when one million people decided to travel the same day as you?
Good thing I had a couple of lessons I had to learn before leaving my city. Before going to LY, I was supposed to visit a Filipino family in a nearby town and on the day I was supposed to leave they called saying they had to stay in my city for a week for some reason and they would love for me to visit some other time.
It was fine with me but I didn’t know what to do for the next four days of my life. I cleaned my place a thousand times already. I finished doing my laundry. (Thanks to a team-mate’s washer that I was able to do it. Mine broke during camp and my laundry piled up that I had to use his for one whole week.) I even made gourmet food for myself. That’s right! Gourmet. I also managed to do a bit of reading and listening to sermons about waiting on God.
God taught me to wait on Him even if I don’t know exactly what I’m waiting for. He just wanted me to wait on Him. It was hard the first day because I’m usually on the run but by His grace I was able to stay inside the room most of the day just meditating on His Word and of course, sleeping. It continued the next day but with a much clearer purpose.
After a few days of doing the same thing it clicked in my brain that waiting or being still before Him is not an awful thing to do. It actually is a sweet time spent with Him. One thing He made clear though is that waiting on Him will not be an enjoyable experience if I continue to refuse to let go of my own thing. I need to reach the point of uncertainty and total helplessness for me to enjoy the freedom that comes with it. I need to stop manipulating situations to please myself and just again, wait on Him because waiting on God means having confidence that He is working things out for His glory and for my own good.
So as I’m waiting for my train to arrive to LY tomorrow, I will simply wait on my Savior to satisfy my restlessness with the truth that He is God and He is worthy to be waited upon.
- contributed by Jap, one of our Filipino teachers serving in China.
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