Epic battle going on with my toaster. The way the toaster should work: put in bread, push down lever. Wait. Then POP! Toast. But my toaster? I keep pushing the pop-up button only to find…bread. Not toast. Then I wait longer and pop it up to check again. Nope, still just bread. Very not toast. So I wait a little longer, pop it up again. Guess what pops up. Not bread. Nope, not toast either. It’s a thin, flat, smoking square of charcoal. No amount of jelly is going to fix a toast briquette.
Finding just the right wait can be tricky. God told Joshua He was handing Jericho over to him in Joshua 6. But victory didn’t just pop up. The Lord’s instructions were specific. “March around the city with all the men of war, circling the city one time. Do this for six days” (Joshua 6:3 CSB). On the seventh day, the Lord said to march around the city seven times with the priests blowing trumpets and the people shouting.
I have to admit, if I’d been one of the marchers around that city, I might’ve asked the Lord by the second or third go-round if we could call it close enough. What possible difference could another couple of laps make? And why six days of waiting when we could go ahead and dominate the city and move on to conquer something else? Then again … I could’ve been toast.
But Joshua’s army listened and obeyed those instructions and, just as the Lord promised, that wall down came. Victory!
Our God is all-powerful. He could’ve conquered Jericho with a thought. He could’ve pushed the walls down like bread sliding into a toaster. He could’ve done it any creative way He desired. Yet He chose the waiting and the marching and the shouting. He chose what He knew they needed. And He chooses what we need too. Sometimes we need the wait.
It’s good to remember He also gives us everything we need to wait well. He gives us strength for the shouting, strength for the marching, yes. There are times, though, when it’s even harder to simply wait. Praise the God who gives us the capacity to trust in Him and wait with strength.
Isaiah 40:29-31 is the perfect reminder that we can find strength we’ve never before experienced as we rest in Him through the wait. “He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint” (ESV).
It’s okay that I don’t always know all the whys or whens in the wait. It’s enough to know that He knows. And to know that if I listen to Him, there will ultimately be victory.
It’s a “wait and see” thing. Wait on His timing. See His power.
Meanwhile, I’ll keep working on the toast timing. At least now I’m mostly catching it after “bread” but before “smoke alarm.”