Monday, November 22, 2010

Introductions.

I'm an idea girl. I have lots of ideas and dreams. Things I want to do at some point and adventures I want to have when the time comes. This blog is a perfect example. It's taken me months to get this out of the storm clouds of my brain and hitting the ground.

I think this is telling of us. We think of what life will be when we graduate from college, get married, have our first child, have enough money to travel, have more free time...insert your qualifier here. Satan lulls us into idleness as we begin to believe that we are powerless without that thing we do not yet have. This is where I've come from.

Hi. I'm Shelly. I'm a single 20 something with ideas and a lot of things I've been "waiting on" so that my life can officially begin.

This project began this summer when the ministry team I am on decided to be much more intentional about studying God's Word regularly and spending time in Truth. Great, right? Absolutely.
[Side bar: I feel like God giggles like a little girl every time we open His book. With so much to share and take us by surprise, I imagine Him giddy with excitement for what is about to transpire as we flip through the pages. Okay..back to it.]
As I began to dig, I noticed this reoccurring theme: waiting. The word "wait," or some form of it, appears in the Bible 129 times and they began to pop up one after another. I began to wonder what I needed to learn about waiting. Then there was this passage:
Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop and how patient he is for the autumn and spring rains. You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near. (James 5:6-8)

Being a Kansas girl, this hit me. I get the farmer thing. I imagined the farmers I know while they're "waiting" for crops to grow. They are preparing the soil, plowing, planting, weeding, the list goes on and on. There is no finger drumming here. All this work is done, in hope that there will be a good crop. They are diligent and hopeful. Something clicked in my mind. You keep looking and waiting for the next thing to make “life happen.” What are you doing right now in the meantime?

A flurry of Scripture came to mind and I landed on this rebuke Paul gave to the Galatians:
“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ.”

I did that. I traded in the Gospel of Christ for the gospel of waiting. I quit believing that life to the full is for right here and now. I lost sight of the fact that Christ is the only certain thing I can wait for. Instead, I've hung my hope on the dream of a relationship, an adventure, or to be discovered with music--as if one of those things would surely be the key to full living, full happiness, and actualizing big ideas. I roll my eyes at myself and wonder how long I've believed this "different gospel." I have life to the full today in CHRIST…even without a husband, a glamorous career, a new home, or a schnazzy car.

Yes, waiting is important. I still wait for those things. But living…living is important, too. Letting our hope hang on the only hope that doesn't disappoint and living in the meantime.

So that's me and this is my big meantime idea unfolding. My hope for this is that you can see what I'm learning in my meantime story and jump into your own. Just an idea...

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