RELIGIOUS WORLD.

Auckland Star, 2 September 1933, Page 2 (Supplement)

RELIGIOUS WORLD.

PRESENT-DAY OUTLOOK. WAITING UPON GOD. THREE STRANDS OF MEANING. (By DR. GEORGE H. MORRISON.) Tn the great Biblical thought of waiting upon Cud there are several interwoven siiT.nrls of meaning. I propose tr> try to distinguish >=-.o::ie of these, (hat we may better grasp the import of

the term. And first, nestling at tho heart of it. anil never absent from the mind of any writer, is the largo conception i>l dependence. As the little child waits upon iie mother, for without its mother it would die; as the anguished patient waits upon the surgeon, iov in the r=kill of tho surgeon is the hope of life, so when ni.e is said to wait f>:i God there is implied -an entire dependence upon Him. There is a sens?, in Biblical phraseology, in which thh waiting i>3 a universal thing. "The eyes of nil things living wait on Thee." The bird that sings, the beast that hunts its prey —all of them are waiting upon Hod. But such an uncscapable dependence docs not bring the thought to its full blossoming. That demands a dependence which is conscious. It Jβ when we realise, however dimly, that in Him we live and move and have our being, it is when we waken to the j mysterious certaicty that we all hang on God for every heart beat—it is only then the word corner to its fulness, in the deep usage of the Scriptures, and man is said to be waiting upon God.

Another strand of meaning in the word takes us into the region of obedience. To wait on is another term for service. When the Frimo Minister waits upon the King, that is not an idle sauntering business. It is part of the service to which he has been called, a service which demands his highest energies. And so when a man is said to wait on God that is not a negation of activity, for the thought of service runs right through the term. We wait on God whenever we help a brother, and do it lovingly for Jesus' sake. We wait on God when we teach our little class or climb the stair to cheer bo'siq lonely eoul. The servant in the kitclien waits on God when for His sake she does her duty faithfully. Tho mistress in tho drawing room waits on God when for Hie sake she is a lady to her servants. Wo are all apt to forget that, and to narrow down 'these fine old Bible words. We are prone to limit the great thought of waiting to the- single region of devotion. But the root idea of it is not devotion. The root idea is simple, quiet obedience. And what doth the Lord thy God require of thee but to obey? There is one other strand woven in the word, and that is the strand of eager, tense expectancy. To wait on, in a hundred spheres of life, id eagerly and tensely to expect. You see that in any court of law when the accused waits on tho verdict of the judge, with an expectancy so tense that it is pain. Now apply that to the realm of prayer, and how it illuminates the matter! *To wait on God is not just to pray to God, for many pray and never expect an answer. To wait on God ie to pray with tense expectancy that the prayer we offer will be answered, for He is the answerer of prayer. All prayer is not waiting upon God, in the full and lofty sense of the Old Testament. For a man mav rise from his knees and forget the thing he prayed for and fail to keep on the outlook for an answer. Only when we pray and pray believingly, and climb the watch tower to see the answer coming, do we reach tho fulness of that fine old word "waiting upon God."