While You Are Waiting ~ Genesis 18:1-10 ~ Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

My first real lesson in patience came at age 7.

The JC Penney Christmas “wish book” arrived in the mail, just in time for my October birthday.  The wish book was a 200-page paradise of color pictures of everything a person could ever want. 

Surely enough, I found what I wanted for my birthday: an old-fashioned penny gumball machine.  Mom & Dad ordered it for me.  BUT it would not be delivered for six to eight weeks.

So for the next six to eight weeks, I came home after school looking for my package to be delivered.  After a while, that gumball machine became an obsession, that I could not go on living until it arrived.

After what felt like an eternity, the delivery truck finally pulled up in front of the house.  I rush to the door, and it happens: the deliveryman opens the screen door, and hurls my prize possession into the house.  The box bounces off the wall, and falls to the ground with a crash of broken glass. 

I’m crushed—and so is my gumball machine.  I’m even more crushed when Mom sends it back and tells me I’ll have to wait another 6-8 weeks for the replacement.

I once heard it said that a human being will spent one-third of their life waiting.  Sometimes, the waiting will be fun and joyous, like counting down the days until Christmas or waiting for baby to be born.  Sometimes, waiting is just downright annoying, like traffic jams, TV commercials, and lines at the checkout.  But the worst kind of waiting is waiting for God to answer or prayers. 

There’s tragedy or an unmet need that we immediately and repeatedly bring to God in prayer.  We wait, believing that God answers prayer—but those answers don’t come. 

We’ve all been there.

Sometimes, we wait for God to bring on that miracle, and what we get instead is more heartbreak.  More tragedy.  More burdens.  More unmet needs.

Who is this God who loves us so much, but doesn’t answer our prayers?  Who is this God who keeps us waiting—and not for what we want, but for what  we desperately need.  Who is this God who will take away our health; our loved ones; our ability to make a living?  How cruel God can seem for making us wait.  How cruel God can seem for denying our requests.

This was an experience that Abraham and Sarah knew all too well.  All along, they had been childless.  In their day, having a child was not considered a “choice” a couple could make as they do today.  This was expected—and necessary for their survival in their old age in a world without social security.  At the same time, people thought they could speak for God back then.  So if ever there was a couple found to be childless, it was believed that they were cursed by God.  In a patriarchal world, most of the disgrace fell on the woman who “failed” to provide an heir for her husband.

But there’s more to the story than social norms…  God had appeared to Abraham and promised to make of him “a great nation.”  God even changed his name from Abram to Abraham, a name that meant “father of multitudes.”

Yet Abraham and Sarah waited and waited…and nothing happened.  After eleven years of waiting, Abraham takes matters into his own hands.  He takes Sarah’s servant as his wife, and they bear a son—but God says, “no, this is not what I promised you…”

So they wait even longer…nearly fourteen more years—and still, nothing…  Then it happens that three men come along—and it isn’t long before Abraham learns that they’re not just random travelers.  These are visitors from God—here to reaffirm God’s promise once again, though they’d waited 25 excruciating years…

After 25 years, wouldn’t you feel that God had forgotten you?  But even though they are still waiting, God is visiting Abraham and Sarah to reassure them that the promise will be kept.

We all know how powerful an unanswered prayer can be in driving a wedge between us and God.  The burdens and unmet needs that we bring to God in prayer begin to literally suck the life out of us, that we can’t live normally.  Hours become days, days become months, months become decades—with all that hurt; all that frustration; all that pain weighing us down.

But do you see what God is doing here today?  God is visiting Abraham to keep his alive—that the promise will be fulfilled, that their prayers will be answered.

This is what God does as you wait.  This is what God does when the waiting becomes so burdensome that you struggle to keep the faith because you can’t even go on living.  Sometimes we must wait for God’s answers to prayer, but we will never wait for God’s presence.  Whenever we must wait, we shall never wait alone.  God will care for us while we wait.

And sometimes, our prayers will not be answered.  We’ll wait in faith and hope, and by all indications, we’ve been flat-out refused.  But God will never deny us God’s presence—God’s loving, comforting, compassionate presence.

In times of loneliness, doubt, and desperation—your God will visit you.  Therefore we must, against all odds, keep the faith and act on it—so to be with our present God.  We must pray to the present God; we must hear again his Word of promise; we must eat at his table.  We must still do his work in caring for other people who wait for his help, just like we do. 

When we keep our faith and when we act on it, God won’t seem so absent.  Though the whole world waits for God’s promised redemption, God is near now.  We have only to take hold of the hand extended to us and walk with God as we wait on God.  If we do, God will lead us to the fulfillment of God’s promises.  Our prayers will be answered and we will have never waited in vain. 

Often we wait for God’s answers to prayer.  Never will we wait for God’s presence.