“The hardest part of faith is often the wait.” The words are Jim Cymbala’s, but the experience is mine. I am waiting – most days with great expectancy, a few with anxiety and impatience. I am waiting for God to open a door – a door that doesn’t seem to have a knob that I can reach, but one that can be easily opened with His touch.

However, I realized something the other day. While I’ve been waiting for the omnipotence of God to do what I can’t, I have been missing the wonder of His omnipotence working in me while I wait. Is it no less a display of God’s power that I can have joy before I see the answer, that I can find contentedness on this side of the door? Isn’t it His work that gives me hope and patience and trust – and aren’t those things (so contrary to my own nature) a wonderful display of His omnipotence? These are perhaps even greater evidence of God’s great power than the open door.

And so I continue to wait, not just with expectancy, but with thankfulness – thankfulness for what I am able to see of God’s great work in the very ordinary life of this sparrow.

I have been staring off into the future, waiting to catch a glimpse of God’s omnipotence and missing the present display of it in my own heart – in these days that are the “hard part of faith.”