Waiting For God On The Side of the Road
By Pastor Marty Edwards
1 How long, O lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer, O Lord my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death; my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,” and my foes will rejoice when I fall. But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, for he has been good to me. PSALM 13:1-6
I ran out of gas today! On the older Harley Evolutions, there is no gas gauge. When filling it up, one must remember to reset the tripometer in order to anticipate when it is time to gas up again. What I thought was a full tank surprised me when my bike sputtered and choked its way to a stop on the side of the road. It was a well-traveled street at rush hour and so I waited patiently, thinking someone would surely stop and offer help. People waved and honked; some even gave me the thumbs up and nodded with a smile, but no one bothered to ask why I was standing on the side of the road next to a lifeless Harley. Several riders even broke the golden rule and failed to come to the aide of a fellow biker.
Sometimes we get the feeling that’s the way it is with God. We are stuck in a bad situation. Life has dealt us a losing hand or else we have created a mess and gotten ourselves in a fix like I did when I chose not to fill up my tank when it occurred to me earlier in the week. Either way, we need help because without it we are going nowhere. Life passes us by, people smile and wave and ask how we are without really wanting to know any of the particulars. All the while we are in a bad situation and we know it.
Not only does it seem that no one cares, but we become skeptical about even God being aware. Worse yet, since He is supposed to know everything, He must be aware of my situation and since He can do anything, He could certainly fix this. We wrestle with these thoughts assured that we have a loving God but are seemingly left in a quagmire. At this point, our enemy Satan is more than happy to help fuel the fire of doubt and discredit God: “Gee! He must not care about you!” Suddenly we feel alone and vulnerable. The world is unkind and adversarial and the odds are stacked against us. We imagine that when we go down for the count there is going to be a huge party to celebrate our demise!
But in verse five the writer chooses not to dwell on human understanding but instead focuses on God and trusts Him for a timely rescue. He believes that God will not turn a deaf ear and even anticipates and knows our needs before we cry out to Him. God doesn’t honk and He may not even wave, but our roadside experience tells us that our Father in Heaven always stops for those who are waiting on Him. That does not mean that everything will always work out the way we would like it to, but it does mean that we are never alone in our circumstances. Even if a friendly biker doesn’t have a spare gallon of gas, he’ll stay with you until someone who does comes along. Trust in God!
…for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. Matthew 6:8