• Facebook
• Twitter

Sometimes you have to go commando to be in Gods story!

My daughter has tons of funny stories from growing up in an orphanage but the one where someone tried to trade their underwear for her chicken might be the funniest [She’ll kill me for telling this story]...

Every sunday the kids ate chicken and rice. Not a big deal to most americans but to a haitian, it’s like Christmas morning once a week. And since the only thing better than having Christmas once a week was the possibility of having it twice a week, the kids constantly tried to leverage sunday meals to their advantage, so when bebe couldn’t find underwear on a school day [she only owned a couple pairs], one of the kids offered a simple solution.

“I’ll trade you my underwear for your chicken on sunday”. What a brilliant move. Rob her of sundays best by meeting a temporary need on wednesday.
I nervously asked bebe what she did. She looked at me like I was crazy and said “Of course I didn’t dad. Its chicken. Why would I trade my chicken for underwear?”

Her response made me laugh out loud, but it also made me wonder how often we trade our ‘chicken’ for ‘underwear’. How often do we trade Gods promises for instant gratification? How often do miss sundays ‘best’ because we settled on wednesday?

All the time.
 
We are an impatient bunch. We don’t like to wait for ‘sunday’ especially when there’s something in front of us now. God on the other hand seems to love to take his time. Not sure if you’ve noticed but pretty much everyone that was used by God in the bible had to do a lot of waiting, sometimes for a really long time.

Moses waited for 40 years in the desert before leading the Israelites. 40!
David tended sheep for a while before defeating goliath then he waited again.
Joseph could have settled for Potiphar’s wife. But he waited. In jail. For years.
Even Jesus didn’t begin his ministry till he was 30.

These stories aren’t the exception. Every major character in Gods story had to fight the temptation to trade their ‘sunday chicken’ for ‘underwear’. They had to go ‘commando’ to be in Gods story. They had to say no to ‘underwear’ and trust God for ‘chicken’. In other words, they had to wait.

There are no short cuts. If we want God to use us, we have to wait. Not the kind of wait that sits idly with folded hands. No, thats easy. I’m talking about the kind of wait that exposes our insecurities and forces us to trust in God alone because we have no other options.

I guess thats the point. Waiting is about trusting God. Learning to trust God.

Right now, I’m ‘waiting’ for the day my wife can stay at home and just be mom.
What about you? What are you ‘waiting’ for? What’s your 'sunday chicken'? [Please share]