How Our Limits Help Us

We must learn to see our limits as the entrance into the good life, not what bars us from it.

But as we grow older, waiting feels like an inconvenience or affront. We take out our phones when we’re waiting in the grocery store aisle for two minutes. We listen to podcasts on our commute. We leaf through magazines at the doctor’s office. Waiting leaves us with a silence we don’t know what to do with. Impatience with waiting is nothing new. Like the antsy Israelites who built a golden calf because they were tired of waiting for Moses to come down from the mountain, we don’t wait well. Waiting evidences our limited autonomy and knowledge. 

We are subject to time and to conditions beyond our control. The seasons remind us of this: we plant seeds in the ground, but we cannot make things grow. Some plants, like the cucumber plant in our planter box, quickly sprout and spread; others never really get going. Like plants, we are subject to the loving care of our Father and the conditions in which he’s placed us. And as much as we plan and make wise choices, we cannot control our lives. Waiting reminds us that although we have agency, we are not ultimately in control.

For those of us who find value in achieving, working hard, and crossing off tasks on our to-do lists, waiting can push us into a tailspin as it unhooks the lynchpin between who we are and what we do. When forced to wait, we must reckon with the deep questions of identity. Who am I when I am not productive? What if waiting weren’t something to get past and hurdle over—a blip on our race to the top? What if waiting is an invitation to see ourselves as children again, dependent on a good Father?

When we learn to wait well, we get to leave behind the hustle that feels like anxiety, the sense we’re always behind where we should be. When we wait well, we leave behind hurry; we slow down to see the beauty of being a creature, a part of God’s good created order, not the masters who are responsible for keeping it all spinning. Waiting allows us to see ourselves as exuberant children, running to God to show him the state of the garden. Waiting is good news: it is an invitation into a spacious life, not the barrier to it. Waiting time isn’t wasted time.