A Servant’s Job

By the time you read this post, I will be nearly to Denver, if not already there, preparing to attend the ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers) conference.

My stomach’s butterflies will be fine-tuning their routine—I have no doubt about that—and a battle between nerves and anticipation will be waging. (Not that anyone else will be able to tell the difference; the external symptoms are about the same.) After all, who knows? Maybe this year, this conference will see those open doors I long for.

Because, quite simply, I hate waiting, and I’ve been waiting for eight years. That may not seem like much to some, and in the eternal scheme, it is inconsequential. I know all this. However, at my young age, it still feels like a long time—I’ve spent nearly a third of my life working toward and waiting for God’s timing in my writing.

Yet what if this is still not the time? What if God tells me “not yet” once again? For that always is a distinct possibility. I myself am a WIP—a work-in-progress—and God works on a timetable that rarely matches mine.

The answer is I wait, as much as I might dislike that. To force something before God wishes it almost always leads to disastrous consequences, and I hate to think I settled for the second-rate because I was too impatient to wait for God’s best.

But waiting seems like such a waste of time, when time is already in short supply. Yet is it really “a waste of time” like I tend to think? For I am God’s servant, and what is a servant’s job?

His job—my job—is to wait upon the Master.