14x3 & Waiting on the LORD
"So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations, from David until the captivity in Babylon are fourteen generations, and from the captivity in Babylon until the Christ are fourteen generations." -Matthew 1:17
The Arrival Fallacy
I recently was reading an article that popped up while I was doing some research for my psychology internship (hence why I've been AWOL for the past few months). This article talked about the arrival fallacy, a term conceived by Tal Ben-Shahar, a positive psychologist. In essense, the arrival fallacy is the illusion that joy lies at a destination ahead, or once I reach this milestone, I will be happy.
For example, I will be happy... once I can drive, once I finish school, when I get a job, when I'm married, when I have the house I always dreamed of, when I win my sports tournament, when I have lots of money, etc. In other words, your happiness hinges on something in the future that will bring lasting stability and joy to your life.
I think we've all fallen prey to the hollow promises of the arrival fallacy. In a culture that places so much emphasis on results and success, the arrival fallacy has become an inherent part of our experience. I know I've believed the lies of the arrival fallacy more times than I'd like to admit, whether it was "once I can drive" or "once I have a job and can buy the things I like" or even "once I have my own house or am married - then I'll be happy, then I'll feel fulfilled."
It's like running a never-ending race, always trying to get to the next point, the next experience, the next high, because nothing is ever enough to satisfy.
The other detriment to the arrival fallacy is that once you get to the point you always dreamed of and you realize it isn't enough, misery, cognitive dissonance, and hopelessness can ensue.
I've been pondering this fairly frequently in the past few months as I'm drawing nigh to the end of my undergraduate schooling and realizing that the culmination of all my years of study is nearly upon me. I thought I would feel different - more educated, confident, or fulfilled somehow, but for the most part I just feel underwhelmed. It feels surreal.
You can never derive lasting satisfaction or joy from your great successes in life.
The false hope offered by the arrival fallacy will eventually be revealed to be just that - false and empty - and will leave you feeling discouraged and unhappy. You can never derive lasting satisfaction or joy from these great "milestones" in your life.
Waiting
I am currently doing my devotions in the book of Matthew, and for those of you who don't know, the book of Matthew begins with the genealogy of the lineage of Christ. That is to say it's a loooooong list of names. I've never really gotten anything out of it in my previous readings of Matthew, so I was just reading it for the sake of reading it when verse 17 popped out.
I read it once, twice, three times. I couldn't believe the timeliness of this verse. This is what it says:
"So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations, from David until the captivity in Babylon are fourteen generations, and from the captivity in Babylon until the Christ are fourteen generations." - Matthew 1:17, NKJV
Did you guys catch that?! Fourteen times three. That's forty-two. Forty-two generations, and that's not even including all the people who lived before Abraham! I looked back in Genesis to try to count all of the generations, and I came up with 62. Then I did a bit more digging, and discovered that there are actually 76 clearly listed generations between Adam and Jesus, the promised Messiah.
That is a very long time.
In Genesis 3, God promised to send the Messiah to rescue His people from their sins. Thousands of years and prophecies later, He does so. God's people were waiting for the Messiah for a very long time.
14x3 generations of waiting and God came through. He’s still the same God.
How easy it would have been to become discouraged, disheartened, or mistrustful of God. Throughout the Old Testament we see the children of Israel becoming jaded and losing faith or hope in God, failing to trust that He would accomplish what He promised He would do.
I think that is often our response to waiting on God's timing. We are so accustomed to taking matters into our own hands and trying to take control that when we realize things are out of our control we blame God or lose faith, beginning to doubt that He is who He says He is.
Waiting is hard. I'm really not trying to minimize that. I struggle with waiting, as I tend to be an impatient person. Waiting is difficult. It is painful. But it can also be where we meet with God.
In the Waiting Room
We are not alone in the waiting room.
Usually the waiting period or waiting room is the place where God brings transformation and healing and where the inner soul work is performed. Waiting is where the proverbial "rubber meets the road," or where we get to see the cracks in ourselves and choose whether we will live out what we say we believe or abandon hope to despair.
God doesn't make us wait because He enjoys our suffering or bewilderment - He makes us wait because He wants what is best for us.
We are not alone in the waiting room - God is right there with us.
In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis writes a beautiful passage. He says:
I do not know why
there is this difference,
but I am sure that God keeps no one
waiting unless He sees
that it is good for him to wait.
When you do enter your room,
you will find that the long wait has done
you some kind of good which
you would not have had otherwise.
But you must regard it as waiting, notas camping. You must keep on praying
for light: and of course, even in the hall,
you must begin trying to obey the rules
which are common to the whole house.
And above all you must be asking
which door is the true one;
not which pleases you best by its paint
and paneling.
I love the way C.S. Lewis puts this, because he urges us to put our trust in Him who is faithful, but he doesn't minimize our role in the process. We can't control our situation of waiting, but we can choose how we respond to it and whether we are making choices that will ultimately grow us and change us to be the people God wants us to be.
I am sure that God keeps no one waiting unless He sees that it is good for [us] to wait.
God is faithful. He cannot be anything but faithful (2 Timothy 2:13). But we also need to be faithful to trust and obey Him in the small things. We can take little baby steps of faith and do the little things we know God requires of us, all the while trusting that God will do the big things and bring us out of the waiting room into the next phase in His good timing.
God is so good and so holy. His ways are not our ways, nor are His thoughts our thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9). While we see our limited desires and view waiting as a pain and nuisance, God sees the bigger picture and wants what will ultimately be for our good. It may not be pleasant at the time, but in the future we will see how God worked all of our waiting, pain, and sorrow into something that was for our good and His glory.
One of my friends was leading a devotional for the junior staff at camp this summer. I was walking by when I heard them reading from Psalm 62:1. It says "truly my soul waits upon God: from Him comes my salvation." I had to stop and soak up the next words, from Andrew Murray, who describes waiting on God this way:
Waiting on God is the ascribing to Him the glory of being All; it is the experiencing that He is all to us.
Waiting is really about trust. Do we trust that God is good? Do we trust that irrespective of what happens next, God loves us?
Waiting is not that we do nothing, it's that we take small, faithful steps, doing what we know God wants us to do and trusting that He will work out the big things in His perfect timing. And in the meantime, we are not alone in the waiting room - God is right there with us, walking alongside us, ever-present and ever ready to help.
♪ - listen to Is He Worthy? by Andrew Peterson.
