Back in 1981 Tom Petty had been fighting with his record company over several issues, which are well discussed in other areas, that had delayed the follow up to his break through album “Damn the Torpedoes” for several months. During the process he took to writing and penned one of his most memorable tunes, “The Waiting”.
Oh baby don’t it feel like heaven right now
Don’t it feel like something from a dream
Yeah I’ve never known nothing quite like this
Don’t it feel like tonight might never be again
We know better than to try and pretend
Baby no one could have ever told me ’bout this
The waiting is the hardest part
Every day you see one more card
You take it on faith, you take it to the heart
The waiting is the hardest part
Well yeah I might have chased a couple of women around
All it ever got me was down
Then there were those that made me feel good
But never as good as I feel right now
Baby you’re the only one that’s ever known how
To make me wanna live like I wanna live now
The waiting is the hardest part
Every day you see one more card
You take it on faith, you take it to the heart
The waiting is the hardest part
Don’t let it kill you baby, don’t let it get to you
Don’t let ‘em kill you baby, don’t let ‘em get to you
I’ll be your bleedin’ heart, I’ll be your cryin’ fool
Don’t let this go to far, don’t let it get to you
The waiting is the hardest part
Every day you get one more yard
You take it on faith, you take it to the heart
The waiting is the hardest part
Copyright © 1981 Gone Gator Music
The chorus runs “The waiting is the hardest part” and relates to a relationship and being together but for the last few seasons it also means for me waiting for God’s work to happen in all my family members lives. Some things are short term waits and other much longer. What we consider a long time waiting varies considerably with the situation. When we’re in a hurry at the store and behind someone who has brought an item to checkout that needs a price check those minutes seem like hours. When it’s 2:00pm on Friday afternoon and we start vacation at 5:00pm those three hours seem like days. When we get disturbing news from the test results at the Doctors office and have to wait until next Thursday to get in to see the Specialist those days seem like weeks. When you are waiting for the job offer that you’ve interviewed three times for and the background check results are fourteen days out those two weeks seem like months. When your son/daughter/grandchild goes off the deep end in making bad choices those months can seem like years and may literally turn into years. My point in all this is that The Waiting is a part of life that we must accept and learn to live and listen for God in. We worry about individual minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years but in reading the Scriptures we see that God deals in very long term projects: Noah – 100 years of building and ridicule waiting on rain, Abraham – 25 years of hoping and forcing and manipulating God’s Promise waiting on a son, Moses – 40 years of waiting in the desert being manufactured into God’s chosen instrument, David – 7 years of running for his life waiting for his promised throne. It appears that God’s factory is not the mass production of a General Motors who used to produce around 13,000 vehicles a day (when our economy was rolling), but the care and hand craft of a Rolls-Royce that produces a car in 30 days. The value of this personalized type of work in our own lives has to come from a sense of contentment that Paul speaks of in Philippians 4:11-12: “I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” To get where we want to be we have to wait, we waited to even arrive where we are at, we must simply wait as we do, as we live, as we experience our day by day minute by minute life – wait that reminds me of yet another tune…
