Traffic Jam!

I was stuck in traffic a couple of weeks ago. On a side street through our downtown, I found cars backed up and not turning right when it was obvious to me there was no reason not to be moving. After my initial frustration, I turned to prayer and hoped to get a lesson out of it. (A conscious choice - not my usual pattern!)

As I rounded the corner to finally make my turn, I saw immediately the reason for the delay: construction workers were backing a large piece of equipment in and out, stopping traffic as needed to accomplish the task. I questioned the wisdom of doing this at 5 p.m. on a weekday, but quickly grasped the lesson for the day.

Only God sees the big picture. Sometimes other believers do things that from our perspective make no sense. They go when we think they should stop - or worse, stop when we think they should go. We sit smugly in our pews assuming our perspective is thoroughly accurate - never considering that they see something we can't envision quite yet. It never occurs to us that the Master Plan might require us to hold on while something big gets moved into place.

I'm a doer - and so my tendency is always to get ahead of God. His "wait" answers are the hardest for me. When I'm sitting in a traffic jam, it's easy to blame the drivers in front of me. And sometimes, people do need to be spurred on to keep moving. Sometimes the enemy is stopping traffic. But sometimes, God Himself is moving something big in place - and I just need to be still and watch it happen.

Even if it feels like a traffic jam, waiting on God is a great place to be.