Are you willing to wait? part 2

Unfortunately, we all have to wait, whether we like it or not. Truth be told, most of life is waiting. For instance, when you watch a football game on TV, most of the time nothing happens. By rule, the actual game takes 60 minutes to play but the average NFL telecast lasts three hours. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, in the average NFL telecast the actual playing of football takes up eleven minutes. If that’s true, then what happens the rest of the time? In that three-hour block of time, you have:

• 60 minutes for commercials,
• 75 minutes when the players are standing around,
• 17 minutes for replays.
• After a few other miscellaneous things are thrown in, such as crowd shots and talking heads in the booth and shots of the cheerleaders, what we are left with is 11 minutes of actual football. 
  

I take that as a parable of life itself: The action of life is small. The waiting is large.
 

Pastor and Bible Commentator, Warren Wiersbe, says this about Joseph’s time in prison: “God permitted Joseph to be treated unjustly and put in prison to help build his character and prepare him for the tasks that lay ahead. The prison would be a school where Joseph would learn to wait on the Lord. He would learn that God’s delays are not God’s denials” (Be Authentic, p. 111).
 

We will all spend a lot of time waiting for something to happen. The question then becomes… “What do you do while you wait?” I find three answers from Joseph’s prison time in Genesis 40.
 

Be Faithful

Genesis 40:1-4 “After this, the king of Egypt’s cupbearer and baker offended their master, the king of Egypt. 2 Pharaoh was angry with his two officers, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker, 3 and he put them in custody in the house of the captain of the guards in the prison where Joseph was confined. 4 The captain of the guard assigned Joseph to them as their personal attendant, and they were in custody for some time” CSB.
 

We don’t know how long Joseph had been in prison when the cupbearer and baker arrived. It must have been more than a day or two. Perhaps he had been in prison for a few months, maybe a few years when suddenly, these two new inmates showed up. 
 

In thinking about this story of Joseph, it’s vital that we view it from Joseph’s perspective. Joseph did not know the future. As far as he is concerned this is just another day in prison. Even though he may be the leader of the prisoners, he is still imprisoned, with no hope of getting out. He could not see into the future. The cupbearer would eventually be his ticket out, but Joseph had no way of knowing that at the time - and it wouldn’t come to pass for two more years.
 

What do you do when you are unjustly accused? What do you when people you trusted turn against you? What do you do when your dreams turn to ashes? Even though all those things were true for Joseph, he remained faithful to God and to his duties.

I somewhere read, “The secret of your future is found in your daily routine.” How true that is! The things you do every day, especially the little things that make up the routine of life; those are the seeds of your future that you sow every day. It reminds me of what the Teacher said in Ecclesiastes 9:10, “Whatever your hands find to do, do it with all your strength…” CSB. 
 

Eugene Peterson, author of The Message paraphrase of the Bible, offers a punchier version of this phrase: “Whatever turns up, grab it and do it.”  I like that… because it emphasizes the unpredictable nature of life. No matter how well planned your day may be… something unexpected is always bound to “turn up.”  When it does… “grab it and do it.” This verse challenges us to take hold of the ordinary responsibilities of life and make sure they get done. 

Continued tomorrow