Waiting on God's timing

There's normally a whirlwind of thoughts going through my mind on a daily basis. And on average, approximately every hour, there is some sort of new input in that whirlwind. Whether that be a friend saying hello, a phone call, a text message, the advertisement on the side of my cup of coffee, the music playing in the room,.... I realize it's all an influence on my thought process. And I've realized I could spend years and hundreds of words on any one of these influences, and expressing how I want to, should, or am intended to react to these things. But in this, in most cases I find that God isn't in the racket, God normally isn't the flashy images, and God isn't in the Coffee either. And yet, while God is seen in all of His creation, normally God wants me to find him in stillness.

It's pretty strange dichotomy, but one I'll learn to live with daily.

As I'd said before, currently I'm finding myself preparing for another season of change and growth, much like the plants outside this time of year. And while I'm to learn to rest and prepare, just like all the rest of creation (and yes, even like God rests), a friend of mine (and dare I say mentor) had some good insight for me yesterday, that I'm still processing.

We talked about the things I'm looking toward defining more in my next year in Denver, and we talked about how I'd felt God's voice leading me in these things. Part of this conversation looked like this;

"Do you feel like you're the right one?"

"I'm pretty sure."

"Do you feel like God has told you to go ahead with this?"

"Yeah, I feel like this is what I'm supposed to do, but I'm learning to be patient and wait for God's timing."

"In my mind, if God has told you to do something, the longer the wait the more room you're leaving for evil to sneak in and pervert it. In fact if you really feel like God is telling you to do something, you really should be asking God 'Why not now?'"

And the best part of the conversation was that it left me questioning my real motivations in waiting.
More often than not, in the midst of all the things that Society is telling us, and all the things that distract us in our own minds, are we really waiting for God's timing, or are we even using the excuse of waiting for absolute silence, before we're willing to do what we feel God has told us to do? Are we really giving God the room to tell us what His will is, or are we waiting for it, at our convenience?

good.intentions

Being a part of a community* with lots of people, naturally means that we regularly come across what seem as endless mounds of problems and hang-ups. However, I've learned in the last stint of my life that being a healthy community isn't necessarily defined by the quantity of problems that you grow beyond, but rather the manner in which you deal with them.

For instance, I would rather my gravestone say "He was a grumpy and hard man, but he sure as hell tried to love people," rather than "Look at what this man accomplished."

So we all spend a lot of time talking with the folks in our lives, trying to figure out how to go about learning and moving forward as a whole community in the most healthy way. I've come to know these conversations as times of translation. It seems as if I'm either helping to translate for someone else, that someone else is translating for me, or more often than not a little of both.

While, in the midst of translation the other day, I had a friend bring to my attention something I often forget about, especially in these conversations. We talked about the difficulty of receiving advice from a source because of a certain air that can often come when sharing something you feel well versed in and feel is a needed addition to a conversation. Frankly, it's often hard to hear a person's loving advice, no matter how helpful, because of the air in which it's given.

I know it's not only the responsibility of the listener to process the words given to them, but also the responsibility of the giver to be conscious of the manner in which his/her gift is given.

So in thinking about why I would want to give advice in the first place, I realized that my words can often be totally misheard just do to the air in which I speak them.

I've know this for a long time, but it was good to be reminded of the fact that good advice is given not so that the source can be accredited but so that it enables the receiver to really take hold of that advice and decided for themselves how to apply it, if even at all in the first place.

*here used in reference to a group of people who share life together loosely and sometimes intimately