Long waits produce the best stories. Perhaps that’s why God includes them as part of his design. Nevertheless, when we’re in the midst of them they can seem never ending.

Think of it: when Abraham and Sarah had Isaac, they were 100 and 90 respectively. (Good thing Abraham married a younger woman). I picture the neighbors watching Sara’s tummy grow, thinking she should lay off the barley. And when Sarah told them she was pregnant, they probably thought she should lay off the fermented grapes.

Nine months later, the baby cries that came from Sarah’s tent silenced those voices.

It’s the strange stories that become God stories. And the timing of them makes them what they are. When good things happen when they are supposed to happen, we celebrate. When good things happen when they’re not supposed to happen, we worship.

A birth at ninety is going to supersede a birth at twenty five every time.

But while we love “God stories” from a distance, we have trouble accepting it when God has one for us. Because inevitably we have to abandon our watches.

We have to be ready to embrace circumstances we don’t want, combined with timing we wouldn’t choose, all wrapped up in the inability to see what lies ahead.

But faith is believing that God is doing things we can’t see, in a way we can’t imagine.

Waiting to see what it will be is how faith is lived out.

Is there a God story He might be writing in you?