Few things show us how impatient we are like the times we are forced to wait. 

The waiting can be for anything – small or great, a short or long wait. And it would seem we have enough practice on ordinary days that we should get better at it than we usually do.

Think how many times a day you routinely might need to wait. You wait for the coffee to brew, for the toaster to pop up, for the microwave to go off, and more before you are even into the busiest part of your day. Then you wait on your kids to get up or your spouse to leave for work. Add to that the wait at a stop sign or traffic signal or someone to pick up the phone when you are on hold and it all starts to add up. These are little nuisances that most of us just expect and learn to roll with most of the time.

Traffic delays due to construction, bad weather, or accidents happen often as well and on days when they do, those little routine annoyances seem to be more frustrating for us. Waiting shadows us most days.

Waiting on results from doctor’s offices or regarding legal issues we may face are harder to endure. We are more likely to experience anxiety and stress waiting on these as well as the results from exams or job interviews.

In a world where much of the time is spent hurrying from one thing to another, we do not like to wait.

Even so, we live in a waiting world.

In listening to an address by John Ortberg, I was struck by how he spoke about how we live with waiting. He talked about living in a Saturday world as he reflected on the disciples after Jesus was crucified and buried. He noted that we see more than one example of 3^rd Day stories as we read in the Bible.

What are 3^rd Day stories? They are ones that follow a similar pattern:

• Day 1 – Trouble of some kind
• Day 2 – Silence and waiting (You don’t even know it’s a three-day story if it is happening to you!)
• Day 3 – Deliverance

For the disciples on that Saturday Sabbath so long ago, heaven was silent.

Some of us have experienced times when heaven was silent when we wanted an answer.

What choice do we have when it is Saturday and we are waiting?

As John Ortberg reflected on C.S, Lewis’ book, Surprised by Joy, he noted we have three options for Saturday. We can despair of all hope or that an answer or relief or deliverance will ever come. We can operate in denial of our anguish or the promise of tomorrow and Saturday ending, or we can wait.

We live in a Saturday world.

Not only do we wait for so many of these things I mentioned, but we also wait for the return for us that Jesus promised when He appeared to the disciples after that long Saturday had ended and Sunday had come. We have a choice about how we wait for Him.

“Friday is behind us, but Sunday hasn’t come. We live in a sinful world. We get sick, lose people we love; we have trouble. We live in a Saturday world.

Is it possible  it is the miraculous day? If we can find Jesus in hell, in death…then we can find Him anywhere!”

John Ortberg