Developing the Quieter Virtues

Whether the cloud stayed over the tabernacle for two days or a
month or a year, the Israelites would remain in camp and not set
out; but when it lifted, they would set out.
—Numbers 9:22

I watch the thunderheads mass and billow over the Boise Front and think of
“the cloud”—the symbol of the Presence in Israel’s midst and the means
by which God’s people were led through the wilderness.

Moses had this to say about the cloud: “Sometimes the cloud was over
the tabernacle only a few days” (Numbers 9:20); other times the cloud “remained
over the tabernacle a long time” (9:19)—several days, a month, a
year—and God’s people waited and waited and waited . . .

Waiting is hard. We twiddle our thumbs, shuffle our feet, stifle our yawns,
and fret inwardly in frustration. We want to hit the road.

“Ah, for the open road,” sighs Mr. Toad in The Wind in the Willows.
“There’s the real life for you . . . Here today and off somewhere else tomorrow!
Travel, change, interest, excitement! The whole world before you, and a
horizon that’s always changing.”

Like Toady, we want to put miles behind us, see new sights. Change, interest,
excitement! That’s the life! But the cloud lingers, and so do we. We feel
trapped by drab routine; day-in and day-out duty; the monotonous grind;
the same ol’, same ol’.

We writhe under our frustration and helplessness. “This is no place to
grow,” we complain. “What chance do I have to develop my full potential?
What opportunity do I have to accomplish great things?” “Haven’t I endured
enough?” we ask. “Haven’t I learned the lesson of this place?” “Isn’t it time
to move on?”

“No,” is often the answer. The cloud lingers, and we make no progress at
all—or so it seems to us.

But what seems so is not what is so. Waiting is not an interruption of our
journey but an essential part of it. Without delay we could never make the
most of our lives. It’s one of the ways God affects the ends on which He has
set His heart.

Waiting is the time for soul making, the time to develop the quieter virtues—
submission, humility, patience, endurance, persistence. The quiet virtues
take the longest to learn, are the last to be learned, and, it seems, can
be learned only through God’s delays, the very thing we’re most inclined to
resist.

We mustn’t resist, and we mustn’t grow restless. We must wait before we
make a change by some rash and willful act—before we give notice to a difficult
employer, before we walk out on a hard marriage, before we trash a
disappointing friendship, or make some other irrevocable decision. We must
wait to make the next move. We’ll know when it’s time to go. God will make
the change in plenty of time.

In the meantime we should look into each delay for its disciplines, learning
its deeper lessons of faith and obedience and yielding to God’s efforts
to change us rather than our circumstances. The extent to which we do so
will determine the extent to which His purposes are achieved in us or are
thwarted.

F. B. Meyer said, “What a chapter might be written of God’s delays. It is
the mystery of educating human spirits to the finest temper of which they
are capable. What searchings of the heart, what analyzings of motives, what
testings of the Word of God, what upliftings of the soul . . . All these are
associated with these weary days of waiting which are, nevertheless, big with
spiritual destiny.”

Taken from Seeing God, © 2006 by David Roper. Used by permission of Discovery House Publishers, Box 3566, Grand Rapids MI 4950l. All rights reserved.