Tip of My Iceberg

I’m not a good waiter.

Not a server in a restaurant. I think I could be quite good at that. I’ve got decent people skills and a knack for talking to just about anybody.

I’m talking about the act of waiting. Not experiencing what I want to experience when I want it to happen.

Life is made up of seasons of waiting. Waiting to get a driver’s license. Graduate from school. Get married. Have kids. Find the perfect job.

Just because we all do it doesn’t make it any easier.

John and I’ve been in Ft. Collins, Colorado, working as part of a team to prepare for our biennial conference. Every two years we meet en masse to remind us all why we’re still doing what we’re doing in ministry. It’s a refreshment of purpose and vision and the chance to see folks we don’t see often enough.

5,000 adults, 2,000 kids.

That’s a lot of folks to get up close and personal with.

Preparation begins shortly after this conference ends. Contracts to be negotiated, apartments to be rented, people to speak. A lot of work for eight days of input.

The work doubles down when most of the team gets here beginning of June. Things need to be made, purchased, put together, planned. Six weeks of crazy.

Waiting for the end result gets tough. Especially when things don’t go the way they’d been planned.

We live in a world full of glitches. Things purchased don’t come on time. A task that had been anticipated at ten hours to complete takes twice that long.

Frustration happens. People are tired. Immune systems bottom out in times of stress. Exhausted people have short tempers.

The question that hovers over the preparations is: Will it be as good as we’ve planned for it to be?

Anytime plans are made for huge endeavors, the chances increase exponentially for problems to arise.

That’s got to be one of Murphy’s laws.

The twelve-foot-tall adirondack chair built for teams to gather for pictures has become  playground equipment for kids. With parents in conversations, we’re waiting for the inevitable.

The porch swings built for conversation areas have already been pushed to their limit by folks (read kids) who want to swing all the way to the top.

There’s concern that the outdoor coffee shop will pose people-flow problems, that close quarters and relationships may collide over spilled coffee.

Stuff will happen.

When God created the world, He did so with love and purpose. He planned for relationships with the people He made.

He gave us opportunity to choose to love Him. Forced love isn’t real love. When Adam and Eve chose to do their own thing, the perfect world so carefully crafted by God opened itself to darkness.

Problems still exist.

There are no guarantees that life will turn out like we hope it will. Because a loving God has gifted us with the choice to follow Him, we have hope. It’s not all bad–God is still active in His world.

When people choose to include Him.

Our conference will be great–not perfect. And like folks often do, some will focus on the wrong, the misses.

But seeing the moments of glory is worth the work.

And the wait.