His uncle put the corms in during the wet and said, in the way he says things, that they would be up next year.
Not this year. Next.
He was thirty-four and had never worked a patch in his life, and he had come home for what he told everybody was six months, and he stood at the edge of the water with his feet in it and thought: a year.
He knew, in the abstract, that things grow slowly. Everybody knows that.
But he had never once been the person waiting.
He drove home along the coast that evening and worked something out that has not left him since, and it is not a comfortable piece of arithmetic.
At thirty-four, he could not think of a single thing he had deliberately waited a year for.
He had waited, plenty. Results, a decision from a company, an appointment. That is not waiting on purpose, that is being made to wait, and there is nothing in it that belongs to you.
He had never chosen a thing whose whole nature was that it would not be finished for twelve months. Not one. He had built a life almost entirely out of things that pay out inside a quarter, and he had never noticed, and his uncle had just put something in the ground with both hands and gone in for his dinner.
The vision is for an appointed time, and the instruction is to wait
Let me not turn this into a lecture about the modern world, because that is easy and it would let you off.
Nothing about your thirty-four years is decadent. You have worked hard and most of what pays out in a quarter is worth doing and somebody has to do it. The absence you found on that coast road is not a moral failure and nobody is going to describe it as one here.
Now hear this, and take it as settled rather than as a challenge: waiting on purpose is something Scripture treats as an instruction rather than an accident, and it can be started at thirty-four by anybody. That is not my brisk reading of an uncomfortable drive, it is what stands written in Habakkuk, and the same Holy Spirit who carried that line was standing in the water with you.
Read what God says to a man who has been complaining that nothing is happening.
For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay.Habakkuk 2:3
Though it linger, wait for it.
That is an imperative. It is not a description of a temperament some people have. It is given as a thing to do, to a man who is impatient in the text and stays impatient afterwards, and God does not shorten the time for him.
So this is yours right now rather than pending a change in how you are built: waiting is available to you as an action, because the written word puts it in the imperative and hands it to somebody who was complaining, and the Spirit of God is the one who holds a person steady through the appointed time.
Now let me name what you actually found on that coast road, because it is bigger than a patch of ground.
A person who has never waited on purpose has never found out what they are made of at month seven.
Everything you have ever done has been resolved before you got there. The work resolves in a quarter. The uncertainty resolves in a fortnight. You have thirty-four years of experience of yourself in the first six weeks of things, and almost none in the ninth month, and the ninth month is where a person meets the part of themselves that nothing else brings up. What is written puts the appointed time out of reach of anybody's calendar, and the Holy Spirit does something across twelve months that He does not do across two.
That is not a rebuke. It is an opening. There is territory in you that you have not been to, and the way in is not complicated: choose something that cannot finish quickly and stay with it.
What is written says the vision is for an appointed time and does not tell you when it comes, and the Holy Spirit does something in a person across a year that He does not do in a fortnight.
And the guard, which belongs here: nothing in this says fast is shallow. Some good work resolves in a week and that is not lesser. And nobody is handing you a length. Not a year because a year is holy, but a year because a year is the thing in front of you, in the water, with your uncle's hands still muddy.
So put something in that cannot be finished this year.
Not as a discipline and not as a spiritual exercise, because framing it that way turns it into another thing you assess. Put it in because your uncle put his in, and because you are thirty-four and have never once been the person waiting.
You can start that today rather than after you have become a patient man, because Scripture puts waiting in the imperative and hands it to somebody impatient, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries a person through the appointed time.
Ground is the obvious one and there is ground in front of you. But it does not have to be. An instrument. A language. A relationship you have been keeping shallow because deep takes years. Something with a real twelve months in it.
And then, this is the part that matters, do not assess it in the seventh month. That is the month you will want to, and it is the month where nothing is visible and the whole thing looks like a mistake.
Go and stand in the water instead, and put your feet in it, and let it be next year.
Declare this over yourself
Then say these out loud. Know what they stand on: this authority is not yours by nature, it is Christ's, and in Christ it has been given to you, so you speak as one representing the King and not as a man auditing his own thirty-four years. Every line rests on what is already written, and it is the Holy Spirit who carries it, never the sound of your own voice. You speak under His will, never over it, and however He answers, the outcome is His.
- Habit of choosing only what finishes fast, you are put down. Scripture says though it lingers, wait for it, and it says it in the imperative to a man who was complaining that nothing was happening.
- Fear that a man who has never waited on purpose cannot start at thirty-four, get out, in the name of Jesus. Waiting is an action rather than a temperament, and my uncle put his in with both hands and went in for his dinner.
- Lord, You keep an appointed time and You do not shorten it for anybody who asks. I am putting something in this week that cannot finish this year, and I am not assessing it in the seventh month.
Habakkuk 2:3
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