Days 8,9,and 10:The Grandest Patience in the Universe

If we get all technical here, it'll be 29 days of following and focusing.  Sorry about that.

Tuesday, after a long season of emotional meetings, I came home lonely and a little hollow.

I opted for decaf and a chapter of Agatha Christie instead of this blog.  True confessions.

Yesterday I wept with a friend.

Midnight rolled around and my eyes were still open, but my heart was all over the place and too frazzled for coherent blogging.

So go the boulders.

In this series of unlovely days, I ran across a quote Monday morning that walked with me and sang as a chorus in my head.

George Matheson wrote

For we through the Spirit by faith wait for the hope of righteousness" (Gal. 5:5, RV).

There are times when things look very dark to me

--so dark that I have to wait even for hope. 

It is bad enough to wait in hope.

 A long-deferred fulfillment carries its own pain, 

but to wait for hope,

 to see no glimmer of a prospect and yet refuse to despair;

 to have nothing but night before the casement and yet to keep the casement open for possible stars; to have a vacant place in my heart and yet to allow that place to be filled by no inferior presence

--that is the grandest patience in the universe. 

It is Job in the tempest; it is Abraham on the road to Moriah; it is Moses in the desert of Midian; it is the Son of man in the Garden of Gethsemane.

There is no patience so hard as that which endures, "as seeing him who is invisible"; it is the waiting for hope.

Thou hast made waiting beautiful; 

Thou has made patience divine. 

Thou hast taught us that the Father's will may be received just because it is His will.

 Thou hast revealed to us that a soul may see nothing but sorrow in the cup and yet may refuse to let it go, convinced that the eye of the Father sees further than its own.

Give me this Divine power of Thine, the power of Gethsemane.

 Give me the power to wait for hope itself, 

to look out from the casement where there are no stars. 

Give me the power, when the very joy that was set before me is gone, 

to stand unconquered amid the night, and say, "To the eye of my Father it is perhaps shining still."

  I shall reach the climax of strength when I have learned to wait for hope. --George Matheson

To wait even for hope, and yet not allow any inferior substitute to walk in the place of the Lord's presence--

Girlfriend, that's focus.

I need me some of that.

I want to offer the vacant place in my heart to Christ alone for the filling.

Meanwhile I ask Him for the grandest patience in the universe.

Following,

Ginger