Waiting for Wonder is Almost Here!!

Hi Friends,

Exciting news … I just received my box for advanced author copies for Waiting for Wonder!! That means soon Waiting for Wonder (along with a separate Leader's Guide for group study) will be available for purchase! Yay!!

Of course, you can pre-order anytime. Here are the Amazon links for that:

Waiting for Wonder
Leader Guide

And here's an excerpt to encourage you today:

...my soul whispers, pants, and dares to ask, “Who is this God?” 

Who is He who makes impossible promises, and then asks us to wait? Who is He who shows us the stars in the sky when we don’t see even a glimmer of hope? Who is He when months turn to years and stretch to decades and still we wait? Who is this God of long intervals, painful delays, and yet-unanswered prayer?

Is he the God of Waiting?

I ponder the question as I stand in my barn, shovel in my hand. I scoop another load of horse manure. I put it in the muck bucket. Just like yesterday, and the day before, the week before, the year before. Just like tomorrow and the day after that. I scoop and nothing changes. I hope and still must shovel. 

This is not my dream. I had bold and beautiful dreams. When I was fifteen, God told me if I wanted to change the world, I must follow him. I followed. Yet, here I am decades later, shovel in hand, ankle-deep in stink. God’s timing is so rarely my own.

For a moment, I pause and let the shovel fall. I stare out over the pasture. Fog lays like an ashen blanket over the trees, the grass, the once-white fences. It hides the beauty. It smothers my sight of things beyond. And I remember that fifteen-year-old girl. She was so full of hope, and promise, and vision. She had no doubts. 

But I have doubts. 

And vision is covered by the pressing grayness.

I sense the weight of the fog, the dampness, the work, and the manure in the depths of my soul. Is this all that life is? Scooping poop in the dreary mist? Where are the promises? Where is the dream of a life that will make a difference in this world? Where is God in the fog, the wet, and the shoveling of stink?

It’s easy to believe God when a promise is new and fresh, bubbling with life. It’s hard when the years pass and nothing changes. It’s hard to keep praying, keep hoping, keep believing. It’s hard when those you love betray you, when desperation strikes, when your own plans backfire, and still God does not fill the emptiness.

I close my eyes and take up the shovel again, knowing that if I am to find God, if I am to grasp his wonder, I must find him here. I must trust him in the in-between places. I must discover the wonder of fog and horse manure, the wonder of waiting.

I want to find him anew, this God of the waiting room, find him here where he seems most absent. I want to know this God who asks “Is anything too difficult for the Lord?” and always has the last laugh.

I need Sarah to lead me there. I long to place my hand in hers and whisper, “Let me see him as you did. Reveal to me this God of wonder-while-you-wait.” And perhaps, if I see him as she did, the whole world will indeed be blessed. But for this moment, I need her to show me a God who is determined, breath-taking, and beyond all my plans. 

Maybe you do, too.