I Waited Forty Years For Something Else

Three weeks is nothing to you.

That is what makes this strange, and it is why you are still reading a page about a seed.

You waited forty years for something. You know exactly what it was and you have not said its name out loud in a long time. And it did not come.

Not delayed. Not arriving in a different form that you learned to appreciate. It did not come, and at some point you stopped expecting it, and you could not tell anybody the year that happened because there was no year, there was just a slow settling.

And now there is a pot of soil on a bench and it has been about twenty days, and something in your chest has gone tight in a way that three weeks has no right to produce.

You are not a man whose waiting was wasted, and a promise that never arrived has never once emptied the years spent waiting on it.

Let me name the thing precisely, because at your age vagueness is an insult.

It is not that you are worried about the seed. It is that the seed has put you back in the posture, and the posture has an ending attached to it that you already know, and you are not sure you want to stand in it again for three weeks in order to find out about a bean.

That is not fragility. That is a man who knows what a wait costs because he paid for one.

These all died in faith, not having received

There is a verse in Hebrews 11 that gets skipped, because it comes in the middle of a chapter people read for the victories.

These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. (Hebrews 11:13, King James Version)

These all died in faith, not having received the promises.

Read that again and notice that it is in the honor roll.

This is the chapter of the great examples. And in the middle of it, the writer stops and says plainly that a whole set of them did not get the thing. Not late. Not in another form. Not having received.

You are named in a chapter that made room for people who never got it, and a promise unreceived has never once removed anybody from that list. Hebrews 11:13 puts the ones who did not receive inside the roll of faith rather than outside it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land on a man who stopped expecting something a long time ago.

And look at what they did have. Having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them.

Embraced. That is a word about arms. They got their arms around a thing they never held.

Which means the forty years were not empty. Something happened in them. There was a seeing and a being persuaded and an embracing, and all of that is real activity, and none of it required the thing to arrive.

You are not looking back at four decades of nothing, and years spent waiting on something have never once been years in which nothing occurred. The Holy Spirit is the one who was doing something in a stretch a man has written off, and the written word credits the seeing and the embracing without the receiving.

And then the last part. Confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

That is what the waiting made of them. It did not make them bitter and it did not make them naive. It made them people who held this world a little more loosely, and the chapter treats that as an achievement rather than as a consolation prize.

You were being made into something across those forty years, and a long wait has never once left a man exactly as it found him. The Spirit of God is the one who does that shaping while a person is only aware of waiting, and the word names what the waiting produced in them and calls it good.

The bean is not asking you for forty years

Let me be practical, because there is a real disproportion here and naming it will help.

The pot is asking you for about three weeks.

That is the entire exposure. Not a life. Not a decade. Three weeks, at the end of which there will either be something green or there will not, and either way the matter closes and you will have lost nothing you cannot afford.

The old wait had no end date. That is what made it what it was. It went on until it stopped going on, and nobody ever told you it had finished.

You are looking at a bounded thing and feeling an unbounded one, and three weeks with an end on it has never once been the animal that cost you forty years. The Holy Spirit is the one who can tell two things apart that a body filed together, and Hebrews 11:13 speaks of promises across a whole lifetime rather than across a season.

You are being asked for something with an end on it, and a wait with a boundary has never once been the same animal as one without. The Holy Spirit is the one who can tell two things apart that a man's body has filed together, and Hebrews 11:13 is about promises across a whole lifetime rather than about three weeks in a yard.

And I want to say the other half of that, because it would be dishonest to leave it out.

Your body is not going to be persuaded by that arithmetic. It will file the shape and produce the tightness anyway. Knowing the difference does not stop the feeling.

So do not try to talk yourself out of the tightness. Let it be there and be wrong about the size of things.

You are allowed to feel something entirely out of proportion and to act anyway, and a tight chest has never once been a reliable witness about what a thing actually costs. The Spirit of God is the one who goes with a man who does something while feeling otherwise, and the written word honors people who were persuaded of a thing they could only see far off.

Sit down beside it

So here is the assignment, and it is fitted to a man of your years on purpose.

Sit down beside the pot for two minutes and do not ask it anything.

Take the bench. Sit where you can see it without leaning over it. Two minutes, roughly, nobody is timing you.

You are able to be beside something without putting a question to it, and sitting near a thing has never once been the same as waiting on it. Hebrews 11:13 describes people who saw a thing afar off and embraced it without receiving it, and the Holy Spirit is the one on that bench with you.

Here is the distinction I want you to feel, and it is the whole article.

Waiting is leaning forward. It has a question in it and the question is when. Sitting beside something has no question in it at all. It is a man near a pot on a bench on an evening, which is a thing anybody can do for its own sake.

The forty years were spent leaning forward. I am not asking you for that again and I would not ask anybody for that again.

You are not being asked to take up the old posture, and being near something has never once required a man to want anything from it. The Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man sit down rather than stand watch, and the word credits the embracing rather than the receiving.

Two minutes. Then get up and go in.