The setting is a quiet waiting room. Sitting in a hard plastic chair, I patiently wait for my turn to be seen by the doctor. Listening intently for my name to be called, I am surrounded by people who are reading magazines, watching the news, or staring at thier phones. Suddenly an elderly woman, her white hair pulled back in a bun, enters the room. Her thick European accent abruptly breaks the silence. “Have you seen my glasses?” she asks. She is a woman on a mission! Everyone quietly accommodates her as she slowly makes her way around the room, stopping at every seat to bend over and look under the chair.
After completing her thorough search, she turns around and slowly hobbles to the receptionist’s desk, “Have you seen my glasses?” she asks “No. I’m so sorry.” replies the receptionist. Suddenly a voice emerges, “Are these your glasses?” A young man who works at the front desk holds up a pair of sunglasses. The woman eagerly walks over, grabs the glasses, looks at them intently and says, “You found them!”
Then she lifts them over her head and exclaims, “AHHHH! TRIUMPH!!!”
As I watched this scenario unfold, I knew that I would write about it. I love the ordinary drama of life and how God uses it to remind, teach, and challenge me, enlarging my heart for others and for Himself.
That precious elderly woman, with her white hair and a thick European accent, captivated me. She completely drew me into her personal crisis. I don’t know about the other people in the room, but when she found those glasses I wanted to stand up and applaud! I wanted to rejoice with her! They had been lost. Now they were found. Her day had been made.
The waiting room of prayer…
On a daily basis we pray for our children. We pray that God would captivate their heart and that they will one day be totally yielded to Him. We pray for those who are lost. We pray for the victims and the fighters. We pray that God would draw them to Himself and that He would relentlessly pursue them until they are found.
Like the woman in Luke 15:8-19, after losing one of her ten silver coins, lit her lantern and didn’t stop looking until she found the lost treasure. The Shepherd in Matthew 18:12-14 who left his 99 sheep to search for and rescue the one precious lost lamb. And the elderly woman in the doctor’s office waiting room who rejoiced after finding her lost sunglasses. I pray that God will not stop pursuing them. I pray that the lost would be found.
Loss. Searching . Rejoicing.
As we pray and quietly wait, remembering that God is always at work even when we can’t see it, we are completely captivated and drawn in. God gives us a heart, a mother’s heart, for these precious people He has called us to raise. We anticipate the day when we will see them fully His. And when it happens we will celebrate! We will join the Father – and other rejoicing families – and we will applaud!
Then we will lift our hands over our head in worship and we will all exclaim, “AHHHH! TRIUMPH!!!“
