Artist: Helen Yousaf
“Put first things first and we get second things thrown in: put second things first & we lose both first and second things.”
C.S. Lewis
I awoke from a pretty deep sleep on April 20th with a phrase moving across my mind like a relentless ticker tape repeating the same message over and over, “There’s a weight in the waiting and a waiting in the weight.” Still pondering the import of what this could mean I engaged in my morning ritual of opening emails and saw this from our Regional Team Lead in Ontario, Peter Wiebe, sharing with our National Team some ponderings. He’d been observing something the Lord seems to be doing in Vineyard Canada that he described as a call on our movement to model both the “wait” and the “weight” of ministry and life in the kingdom. Then on April 29th, Dawn Humphries who pastors the Strathcona Vineyard in East Vancouver and sits on our National Team as our Engage Catalyst, echoed this same theme iterating that in VIneyard Canada we have been cultivating “a much deeper posture of waiting and weighing over the past few years – this .. is a real sense that we’re going back to our Quaker roots in a really healthy way.”
The Spirit is speaking “you think?”
The most common Old Testament word for waiting is qavah. While it means to wait or look for with expectation, it literally implies binding together by twisting or weaving, like strands in a rope. In this sense, waiting means strengthening your life by “twisting” or intertwining it with God’s strength. Isaiah 40:31 may immediately spring to mind,
“those who wait upon God get fresh strength.
They spread their wings and soar like eagles
They run and don’t get tired,
they walk and don’t lag behind”
MSG
The sense of the “weight” we experience in worship, intercession, discernment and the work of ministry requires that we rely on the strength, presence and empowerment of God. The biblical lens lasers in on the posture of “waiting” to ensure that we move in tandem with God’s guidance and stamina, not our own, as we carry the weight of our calling. Sounds like Jesus in Matthew 11:28-30, ” Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
A somewhat startling revelation in scripture is that the wilderness and waiting are intrinsic. Although never a permanent place of residence, the wilderness experience is critical to a “true” waiting as it is a place where all else is stripped away and reliance on the Lord is not only survival but the way of plumbing the fount of God within us – the work and presence of the Spirit – that we may sing as the Israelites sang in the desert, “Spring up, O well!”, and taste of the promise of Jesus to us that the water He gifts us is “like a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14) and “rivers of flowing water” that come right from our very guts (John 7:38).
There is a weight in the waiting and a waiting in the weight.
The full weight of Jesus public ministry fell on Him by the Spirit after his sojourning in the wilderness – a time of utter reliance on God and His word. A waiting before the weight. The early church was called to wait for the Spirit before stepping out in the weight of the call upon her to disciple the nations and shine the light of the kingdom in the midst of a dark and antagonistic age. A waiting before the weight. Paul spent three years in the Arabian desert after his conversion and then waited at least another decade before he was released into the ministry that Jesus had called him to. A waiting before the weight. James, penning the first document in chronological order of the New Testament canon, cautions us to not have “many teachers” – influencers, mentors and leaders are fair synonyms in this text – as there is a weight in carrying such a role in the faith community that requires a stricter assessment than other modes of service in the body. A waiting before the weight. In 1 Thessalonians we read the injunction, “Don’t appoint people to church leadership positions too hastily. If a person is involved in some serious sins, you don’t want to become an unwitting accomplice.” MSG
A waiting before the weight.
The synergistic dance of these homophones rhythmically pulses throughout our whole lives and journey of discipleship.
There is a weight in the waiting and a waiting in the weight.
Step by step.