Waiting Series

Waiting

I have a question that I hope some one here can help me understand the answer.

I freely admit that I don’t understand Marketing. I know nothing about being a major retailer and absolutely zip about making products.

On Thanksgiving night I was @ my aunt in law’s home. Watching re-runs of one of the shows I like and I kept seeing a commercial…over and over. Ok there were several of them that were awfully repetitive.

However the was one that just blew my mind.

It was for the PS3 – Game system. That is the high dollar electronic gadget for this Christmas gift season. It went on sale just last week and I watched news reports that interviewed people that waited in line for 5 days to get into Best Buys or Circuit City to buy the system…..

The system is sold out everywhere. ( If you insist on purchasing one you can find them starting for $1000 on E-bay. )

My point is,…..If they are sold out then why spend millions of dollars advertising during the Peak commercial season.

I just don’t get it. ( And my kids won’t get it for a long time either. )

It just floors me that the company that makes them is working so hard to keep the frenzy and desire so high - when they can’t supply satisfaction.

They expect people to be willing just to wait.

Today we have as our scripture a psalm that opens with the statement:

I waited patiently for the LORD; he turned to me and heard my cry.

Wait and patiently in the same sentence seems a little odd to me. I guess because I am not that patient. I like to claim that I am but, I know it is not true.

The author is looking back on a life situation, that is past and perhaps they were not as patient as we might think. They claim patients but, they also mention that they were not silent…they cried out to God.

Often the patients we demonstrate has less to do with us and our ability to wait and more to do with the situation.

Like when we were children and had no choice except to wait for Christmas. We could moan and groan all we wanted too it would not bring Christmas any faster.

Advertisers play on our “patience” weakness all year round. They tell us how to smell, and look, what to drive and where to live. They play on our tendency to make every thing in life about having it now. Centering the process on us because we worked for it or deserve it some how.

There are patient people in this world. They don’t get aggravated in traffic at the lights that stay red for ever when no one else is coming. However, I am afraid that they are a dyeing breed, and if it is a learned trait taught by parents or school then it will soon be a lost art. We live in a give it to me now, fast food, and get there quick kind of world. Not many of us want to waste our time waiting.

In fact many of us would rather do without than wait in a line.

However, all through scripture we find people waiting for God to do things. Abraham and Sarah wait 25 years for the promised child. Not that they were patient. They tried to solve their needs and wants in their own way.

Or how about the Israelites wondering in the desert for 40 years before entering into the Promised Land. That was an act of patience right? Perhaps not….

When we look at scripture we might start to think that waiting might be a spiritual discipline. God called the people of the past and us to be waiting people.

Are we waiting just to wait? Is it simply a control thing like when we make out pets do a trick for a special treat?

The psalmist seems to have learned something about patiently waiting. His tone does not contain frustration or anger or sadness. It sounds like a hopeful reminder.

Perhaps, we can learn something from their experience or maybe we can find new meaning in our personal experiences.

The psalmist has learned that when he waited patiently he let God work.

When he waited patiently God came to him and heard is cry.

And ultimately, God responded in tangible ways.

In the writer’s situation he describes what God did, He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.

Now, I suppose that the author could be talking about a real slimy pit or quick sand but, I believe that we are looking at a metaphor here.