25 years

No...not of marriage.

This past Sunday church was out at Mission Meadows where we spent a week this summer while I (Aaron) taught at their Jr. High camp.  Every year on Labor Day weekend the district Covenant churches combine out at camp for Sunday worship.  It was good. Real good.

Two things stuck out for me:

1.  The pastor (Boaz Johnson), a professor at North Park University, sung the Benediction over us in Hebrew.  It rocked my socks.  For whatever reason I got instantly emotional.

2.  The second forced me to think a little harder.  It was the children's sermon.  Pastor Adam was talking about patience and waiting.  Now these are topics that I'm familiar with.  I've taught them myself before.  Particularly when we were waiting for Corban to come home, but again with Tobiah, God taught us a lot about patience.  So it's not like I wasn't ready for what was coming.....

He talked about Abraham.  Again....a story I'm familiar with....he reminded me that God promised Abraham that he would be the father of nations....and then 25 years goes by.  25 years! It was one of those times in life where I knew something but I needed someone else to say it out loud for it to register. 

So I re-read the whole chunk of Abraham today.  Here's what I got.  In Genesis 12, God makes a covenant with Abram and tells him that he is going to be the father of a great nation that God is going to use to impact the world.  Which is pretty awesome.  Except that God doesn't say that it's going to happen right away.  Abraham waits.  And waits.  And waits. 

Then he and Sarah try to take matters into their own hands.  Sarah gives Abraham (still Abram for those keeping track at home) her servant Hagar because God isn't making things happen quick enough.  Hagar gets pregnant and has Ishmael.....which isn't exactly what God had in mind.

It's not until Chapter 21....25 years later, that God's plan starts to take shape when Isaac is born.

As we finish up this paperwork I've been a little stressed.  I just want to be done with this portion of the process.  I want to move one.  I'm very aware that we're a long way off.  I'm that we have a lot of waiting yet to go.  I don't want to take matters into my own hands.  This was a great reminder of God's plan and it's perfectness.

I needed that.