Imagine being trapped. 

You are captive to an oppressive, forceful government. For years you and everyone you care about is enslaved. 

Decades pass. A strong leader challenges your dictator and manages to free you and the slaves. You flee as a fugitive, promised to be taken to your people’s new land. The journey is hard — encompassing a variety of people all weak from their years in captivity, not to mention the elderly and the children who make the trek slow. You do everything that you are told but many — most, in fact! — of the people around you are impatient. The meandering to your new home that should have lasted for a few months, takes 40 years. 

At last you see it. The new land. And you are plunged back into the middle of nowhere to wait longer.

A bit of a cause to grumble.

The Israelites were saved from slavery into the bondage of their own impatience. An impatience, that, if we judge decently, we really can’t argue with:

Years and years under a worsening system to be led into the wilderness on a road trip without any significant vehicle and the biggest family in the country, only to find that your destination is taken over by a nation that makes yours look like grasshoppers, then have your route thoroughly “recalculated” for another 20 years or so, fight a few battles in between, see half of your family killed, another part of them smote by God’s wrath, and your leader felled from old age.

If you have ever studied the Old Testament, you have learned to laugh at the Israelites because of their inability to wait. In reality, we can’t even wait patiently for a website to load — much less for God’s queue to lead us into a land of Promise. They’ve clearly got something on us.

As modern philosophers like to emphasize, “In this instant-gratification, push-of-a-button, easily downloadable, ‘you-need-this-right-now,’ microwave-meal-in-60-seconds world, we have an increasing problem with waiting!” Enlightening. But is it true? It could be said just as easily that in this broken world — in this world wherein we have abandoned all regard for God — we have a worsening problem with waiting. Anything to exaggerate our doom could be easily said — make us think that a recent change of our own got us to this point. Something had to cause the impatience after all! No one woke up with the spontaneous idea to order factories to produce microwaves and 60-second meals (although whoever reached that conclusion was obviously brilliant).

History shows clearly that waiting has been a problem from the beginning. To pin yet another reason on Eve’s sin in the garden, you could call what she did impatience. But worse than being a part of the first sin, impatience has become our greatest excuse for it. Sins are understood and excused with phrases like “I couldn’t wait!” or “I’m just not that patient.” Impatience is accepted — it is understandable. After all, no one should have to wait, right? Any ad or marketing tactic would concur.

Right now I am supposed to be giving a speech. Or I was. Over the past weeks, I’ve prepared, memorized, written, and pieced together bits of an idea I have become passionate about. The prize money was enticing and it being a small competition, I admittedly believed I had a good shot at winning. It's not that I wanted the money or recognition — I wanted the experience, the star on my resume so I could look back on my skills and improvements to use as a tool in the future. 

But obviously, I am not there right now. The primary conclusion of my speech is what convinced me to wait for the next opportunity.

Actions speak louder than words. That was the topic I chose. For a few months, it has been the mantra repeated in my mind, as catchy as a song and haunting as if there were a ghost coiled around my head, whispering the truth in my ears. Six or seven months ago, I was acquainted with the truth the hard way and it has continued to emerge in my mind. It's both a blessing and a curse because words come easy to me. Actions do not.

Think back to the instance I named before. The Israelites are wandering — what do they do in that time? What implores their movement? What urges their desires? The actions they see around them. They witness the events of Pharaoh's anger and God’s provision — God acts by freeing them, by giving them a law, a leader, and sustenance — and they have a reaction. They look around and see alternate scenarios — people with kings and kingdoms and what can only be satisfaction — and they want it! Both the actions of God and of others around them moved them more than anything.

Of course, words could move them. But think about the Ten Commandments — words written on stone v.s. the actions around them. The stones that bore those ground breaking words were cracked, replaced, and later lost. The actions they inspired never ceased to drive the people on.

Action has a huge effect on us — many times words are best set aside so they can be fulfilled. That is what I am learning right now. Truths like these urge me to wait — the truth that it is far more impactful to help where you are needed than give speeches where you aren’t — and in turn far more rewarding when someone actually needs your input. Actions inspire and words pierce — but words can almost always wait where actions cannot.

The Israelites made mistakes here just like we do. Instead of responding to God with actions, their sentiments were almost entirely composed of words. Impatience was filled with broken promises of obedience that led them to more sin — words to fill the place of action. As much as words have an impact, they can’t fit that task in the same way a pacifier can calm a baby but not sustain it. They need something more solid.

The speech was important to me. Infinitely more important is that my family needed me during that time. The words about action are worth putting off so the actions can take place — even if only noticed by a few people.

Actions are stronger than words because words only inspire action. Waiting for the right time to say something is a worthy time to show we mean it. Words have their power. Worthy words — good, strong ones — are worth the wait.

©Goodstrong Words Mar. 2022