Hold the line

What about those unanswered prayers of yours? Where are they? Misplaced in a dusty file somewhere in some forgotten closet in heaven?

Sometimes it seems like it, I have to admit.

But God hasn’t forgotten the prayers of his children.

Sometimes the answer is an immediate “yes;” sometimes a prompt, “no;” and sometimes an indefinite, “maybe.”

It’s that third, last category, that brings doubt and grief to our impatient souls.

I’m reminded the little girl who was overheard praying, “Lord, Grandma still has the sciatica, Daddy still can’t find work, Momma still can’t lose weight, and Bubba hasn’t found a date to the prom yet. I’m tired of praying and not getting any results.”

We want results.

Preferably, now.

But God does not bow to our impatience, even when we pray with folded arms and tapping feet.

“In due season” the Bible says, “we will reap, if we don’t give up” (Galatians 6:9).

There’s sowing. We get that. And there’s reaping. Understood. But waiting for that due season can be unnerving and drag into what seems like an eternity.

And sometimes it is an eternity.

Literally.

I heard about a news journalist who visited the Western Wall, the Wailing Wall, in old Jerusalem. She talked to a man who had been praying there twice a day for 60 years. He would pray 40-45 minutes each time, morning and evening. The reporter asked the man, “What do you pray for?”

He said, “Lots of things, but mainly peace between Christians, Jews, and Muslims. I pray for all the hatred to stop and for our children to grow up in safety and shalom.”

“And how do you feel after praying 60 years for all those things?” the reporter questioned.

The old man said, “Like I’m talking to a wall.”

So, let’s face it, the wall, that is, and ask, “What do you do when you feel like you are talking to a wall?

What to do when like Habakkuk of old you cry, “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear?”

The best I know is: keep on keeping on.

I read about a wealthy woman who phoned the manager of a concert hall and asked him if anyone had found a diamond pendant. She believed she had lost it and was frantically calling every place she had been the evening before, trying desperately to find it.

“I’ll go and look,” said the manager to the woman on the phone. “Please hold the line.”

After a quick search, he found it. Amazed that he was actually holding the valuable diamond in his hand, he rushed back to bring the good news to the lady. But she was no longer on the line. And she never called back. The expensive jewelry went unclaimed.

Now maybe the lady was so wealthy that the diamond didn’t really mean all that much to her, so she too quickly hung up the phone. And likewise, maybe God wants to answer our prayer, but we, like that lady, have so much of our own stuff in our hands that God’s answer isn’t really worth our wait.

But I did say she was frantically looking for the lost pendant, so maybe, despite her desperation, she simply doubted, disbelieving that it would ever be found, and so she too easily gave up. We do that, too, when we move on and work out our own plans for our lives, convinced that God doesn’t care and isn’t concerned with the likes of us.

Even though he couldn’t see it or feel it, Habakkuk came to trust that God had a plan: “Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation” (Habakkuk 3:17-18).

God will come through “in due season,” if we don’t give up.

His Son’s resurrection reminds us of that truth, for His resurrection was never in doubt from heaven’s side, only ours.

Between His death on Friday and resurrection on Sunday---that short period of earthly time---some people must have died, still waiting for the Promise, just as others had for hundreds of years.

Our “due season” may come only in the eternal.

The best, indeed, the only thing to do is hold the line.

And not give up.