An article in Time.com a few years ago noted that ketchup flows out of a glass bottle at a rate of .028 miles per hour. That's slower than a Galapagos tortoise, which, according to the San Diego Zoo, zips along at a blazing 0.16 miles per hour, or almost six times faster than ketchup.
However, Dave Smith, a PhD candidate at MIT, and a team of MIT mechanical engineers and nano-technologists have offered a posible solution to this ketchup flow problem. After months of research, Smith and his team developed LiquiGlide, which they say is a “kind of structured liquid [that's] rigid like a solid, but lubricated like a liquid.” The researchers say that coating the inside of a bottle with LiquiGlide will cause ketchup and other sauces to slide out faster than a Galapagos tortoise. Smith claims that the sauce industry, which rakes in $17 billion a year, would love to get their hands on the invention.
Keith Wagstaff, the author of the Time article concluded, “Let's hope some big [ketchup] companies bite. I'm tired of waiting five minutes for ketchup to land on my cheeseburger.” (Keith Wagstaff, “MIT Scientists Figure Out How to Get Ketchup Out of the Bottle,” Time.com, 5-22-12; www.PreachingToday.com)
People don’t like to wait. They don’t like to wait for their ketchup. They don’t like to wait at the checkout line. Sometimes, they don’t even like to wait on God. That’s when some people take matters into their own hands and try to hurry God along, but that only makes things worse.
At least that’s what happened to Abram and Sarai in the Bible. God had promised them many descendants, so they waited for their first child. And they waited…and waited…and waited. For ten long years, they waited. Then they decided they needed to help God out. If you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Genesis 16, Genesis 16, where we find out what happens to those who try to hurry God along.
Genesis 16:1-3 Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar. And Sarai said to Abram, “Behold now, the LORD has prevented me from bearing children. Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. So, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram her husband as a wife. (ESV)
Now, all this was perfectly legal in Abram’s day. If a woman was childless, she could give her maid to her husband, and the child born of that union would be considered a legitimate heir. It was a way to help God out. It was a way to help God get things started in giving them many descendants, just like He promised. Only God didn’t need the help, and their scheme only made things worse.
Genesis 16:4-5 And he went in to Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. And Sarai said to Abram, “May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my servant to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the LORD judge between you and me!” (ESV)
Hagar despises Sarai, and Sarai blames Abram. In fact, even though the whole scheme was Sarai’s idea, Sarai loses respect for Abram and calls on God to judge between the two of them. That expression, “May the Lord judge between you and me,” is an expression of hostility and suspicion in the Bible (Gen. 31:53). Sarai didn’t trust her husband anymore, so she called on God to keep an eye on him. And Abram is no better. He blames Sarai.
Genesis 16:6 But Abram said to Sarai, “Behold, your servant is in your power,” – Implied, “It’s all your fault. You’re the one who controls your servant, and you chose to let her sleep with me. Why are you blaming me? You’re the one to blame.”
Genesis 16:6 But Abram said to Sarai, “Behold, your servant is in your power; do to her as you please.” Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her. (ESV)
Literally, Sarai humbled Hagar. She reduced her status from concubine to slave and treated her as such. So Hagar fled. Hagar couldn’t stand the hostility in the home anymore, so she got out of there as quick as she could.
Abram and Sarai’s home fell apart. They lost respect for each other. They blamed each other, and things got downright ugly.
But that’s what happens when we stop waiting on God. That’s what happens when we stop trusting God and take matters into our own hands. That’s what happens when we become impatient and try to force the issue in our own human strength. Things get worse and relationships are damaged.
Did you ever have to wait for a driver to pull out of a parking space so you could pull in? And did you ever wonder what took him so long?
A recent study of 400 drivers in a shopping mall found that drivers took longer to pull out of a space if someone was waiting for their space.
On average, if nobody was waiting for the space, drivers took 32.2 seconds to pull out of a spot after opening a car door. If someone was waiting, drivers took about 39 seconds. And what about the person who honks to hurry a driver? hen, drivers took 43 seconds to pull out of a space when the waiting driver honked! (M. Raphael, “It's True: Drivers Move Slowly If You Want Their Space,” Raleigh News and Observer, 5-13-97)
Expressing your impatience only makes things worse. So, whatever you do, don’t force the issue.
DON’T GO AHEAD OF GOD.
Don’t try to manipulate the situation to get God’s work done through your own schemes.
God promises to “supply all our needs according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” But sometimes we don’t think He’s supplying quick enough. That’s when some of us get into trouble with “get-rich-quick” schemes or getting into heavy debt. Be careful, because those who try to get rich quick get poor fast.
Don’t rush the process. Don’t go ahead of God.
God promises to make us mature and complete in Christ. But sometimes we want to rush the process in those we love. We think, “If only my husband (or wife) would change, if only he (or she) would be more loving or respectful, if only he (or she) would be more this or that, then I would be happy.” Then we devise our own schemes to force the issue. We “honk the horn,” so to speak. We nag and complain and manipulate and control to get people to change, and then we wonder why things only get worse.
Don’t do it! Don’t try to change your spouse or your children or the people around you. Trust God to change them at His pace and in His time, and concern yourself only with yourself.
Have you considered that perhaps God wants to change YOU in the situation? Have you considered that perhaps YOU are the one that needs to grow and mature, not so much your spouse or your children?
Richard Hendrix says, “Second only to suffering, waiting may be the greatest teacher and trainer in godliness, maturity, and genuine spirituality most of us ever encounter.” (Christian Reader, Vol.31)
Don’t short-change the process. Don’t go ahead of God. Instead…
WAIT ON GOD.
Be patient for Him to act in His time and in His way, and trust the Lord who hears and sees you in your distress. That’s what Hagar learned to do.
Genesis 16:7 The angel of the LORD found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. (ESV)
She’s on her way to Egypt. Hagar is headed back home where she came from. She’s trying to run away from her problem when the Angel of the Lord stops her.
Genesis 16:8-12 And he said, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?” She said, “I am fleeing from my mistress Sarai.” The angel of the LORD said to her, “Return to your mistress and submit to her.” The angel of the LORD also said to her, “I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude.” And the angel of the LORD said to her, “Behold, you are pregnant and shall bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael [which means “God hears”], because the LORD has listened to your affliction. He shall be a wild donkey of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen.”
That’s still true today. The Arab people, descendants of Ishmael, are a wild and untamable people, and they despise the Jews, the descendants of Ishmael’s brother yet to come. Even so, this is quite a promise to an Egyptian slave! Look at how she responds?
Genesis 16:13-16 So she called the name of the LORD who spoke to her, “You are a God of seeing,” for she said, “Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.” Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi [which means “The well of the Living One who sees me”]; it lies between Kadesh and Bered. And Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram called the name of his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael. Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram. (ESV)
Instead of running away, Hagar believed God. She returned to Abram and Sarai, and God gave her a son. You know, every time Hagar called her son, Ishmael, she was reminded that God hears. And every time she got a drink of water from the well, Beer Lahai Roi, she was reminded that God sees.
Hagar learned to wait on the God who hears. Hagar learned to wait on the God who sees, and that’s what we must learn, as well.
Don’t run away from your problems. That never works. Instead, face them with faith in God, and wait on the God who hears and sees you in your distress. Hope in the Lord who knows and understands your pain.
Isaiah 40:31 says that, “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.”
Ernest Gordon, who was the Dean of the Chapel of Princeton University for 26 years, experienced this in a Japanese concentration camp during World War II.
Gordon and his fellow prisoners were used as slave labor to build the Thailand-Burma Railroad, and hundreds of them died from mistreatment. As an officer, Gordon struggled to help his men make sense of all the suffering they had to endure, but he became deathly ill himself.
The only way he survived was under the care of Chaplain Dusty Miller, who shared his own precious rations with Gordon. Chaplain Miller nursed Gordon's broken body back to health, and he also spoke the words that nursed Gordon's broken soul back to health as well. Miller told him: “A man can experience an incredible amount of pain and suffering if he has hope. When he loses his hope, that's when he dies.” (To End All Wars, DVD scene 11, www.PreachingToday.com)
My friends, no matter how bad it gets, don’t lose your hope in the Lord. He sees you in your distress. He hears your cry. All you need to do is wait on Him. Don’t run from the problem, and don’t try to fix it yourself. Just wait on God.
In a recent New York Times article, journalist Alex Stone writes about how executives at a Houston airport solved a plethora of passenger complaints about long waits at the baggage claim. They first decided to hire more baggage handlers, reducing wait times to an industry-beating average of eight minutes. But complaints persisted.
This made no sense to the executives until they discovered that, on the average, passengers took just one minute to walk to baggage claim, resulting in a hurry-up-and-wait situation. The walk time was not a problem; the remaining seven empty minutes of staring at the baggage carousel was.
So, in a burst of innovation, the executives moved the arrival gates farther away from the baggage claim area. Passengers now had to walk much farther but their bags were often waiting for them when they arrived. Problem solved. The complaints dropped.
For the same article, Stone interviewed MIT operations researcher Richard Larson, the world's leading expert on waiting in lines to discover the psychology behind our waiting. According to Larson, the length of our wait is not as important as what we're doing while we wait. “Often the psychology of queuing is more important than the statistics of the wait itself," says Larson. Essentially, we tolerate “occupied time” (for example, walking to baggage claim) far better than “unoccupied time” (such as standing at the baggage carousel). Give us something to do while we wait, and the wait becomes endurable. (Rick Lawrence, Skin in the Game, Kregel Publishers, 2015, pages 105-107; www.PreachingToday.com)
In the same way, when we wait on God, we feel like we have to “DO something”. Well, let me ask you a question. Have you ever considered that God is DOING something in you while you wait on Him? Sure He is!
So don’t go ahead of God. Instead, wait on Him until He accomplishes the good work He is doing in you.
In his book, Sabbatical Journeys, Henri Nouwen writes about some friends of his who were trapeze artists. They were called “the Flying Roudellas.”
They told Nouwen there's a special relationship between flyer and catcher on the trapeze. The flyer is the one that lets go, and the catcher is the one that catches. As the flyer swings high above the crowd on the trapeze, the moment comes when he must let go. He arcs out into the air. His job is to remain as still as possible and wait for the strong hands of the catcher to pluck him from the air.
One of the Flying Roudellas told Nouwen, “The flyer must never try to catch the catcher.” The flyer must wait in absolute trust. The catcher will catch him, but he must wait. (John Ortberg, “Waiting on God,” Preaching Today #199)
So it is in our relationship with God. We must never try to catch the Catcher. Just wait in absolute trust. God will catch us if we wait. But if we try to help Him out, we could end up falling flat on our faces. So wait on Him who hears and sees you in your distress. It’s the only way to fly! It’s the only way to experience all that God has for you.
