Adoption News and Thoughts on Waiting

Timothy is officially a KIRK!!! We are rejoicing tonight! Although there are 147 million orphans in the world, ONE MORE has a forever home! We got the phone call tonight that the Ethiopian courts had ruled today on Timothy's case...there was lots of screaming in this house = )

I am reminded tonight, once again, how often God uses WAITING to bring His plans to fruition. This morning I was reading the account of Joseph. For those of us reading the story thousands of years after it actually happened, it is easy to forget just how long Joseph waited on the Lord. He was 17, the Bible says, when God gave Him a dream...then he was thrown into a well, sold into slavery, harassed by his owner's wife only after he made them wealthy, and thrown into prison. I am intrigued and somewhat humored by the phrase that comes next: "Some time later..." I wonder how much "time" really passed. I wonder if it felt like a million years to Joseph, while to God it was obviously just a drop in the bucket of eternity. I wonder how Joseph passed his time in jail, if he began to question God's hand in his story.

I have to continually remind myself that God is writing MY story, that these days I am living ARE the destination. I often wonder when I am going to step into my God-ordained purpose, and then I remember that I am LIVING it right now, if only I will have the eyes to see it and the willing hands and heart to take hold of it. God never left Joseph. In fact, if I reflect on the account of his life in its entirety, God impacted a lot of people through Joseph in his years of "waiting." God wove an incredible story out of Joseph's life, a story that would have fallen apart without those painful years of serving an oppressive master and sitting in prison.

There are still days when I question God and wonder what I am doing in nursing school, why I can't be doing "greater" things for God...and then I remember that each day I live and breathe is another opportunity to serve those God has placed before me, to care for little hands and hearts, even if only in a gentle word of encouragement. If God can change the entire history of a nation through one man's willing hands and patient spirit while sitting in jail (for a crime he never committed), then I hope and pray He can use me as I flounder through school and often question His always PERFECT plan.

"WAIT on the Lord. Be strong and take heart and WAIT for the Lord" (Psalm 27:14).