Called to the Table Before the Meal Is Ready
One of the things that is quietly becoming a norm in our household is that we share mealtimes together. For me, it is becoming a non-negotiable. Life is busy, and with children of different ages there is always something happening, but I want there to be a point in the day when we sit together around the same table.
There is also something else I have been intentional about teaching them through our mealtimes: patience and how to wait.
Before dinner is completely ready, I will often call the children to come and sit at the table. I may still be finishing something on the cooker, plating the food or getting the last few things together, and inevitably someone will ask, “Mummy, is dinner really ready? You’re still cooking. Why do you always call us?”
They know exactly what is coming. They can smell the food, see me preparing it and probably think it would make far more sense for me to call them when everything is already on the table.
But that would remove the very thing I am trying to teach them.
I want them to learn that they can be called to the table and wait. They do not have to receive something immediately simply because they are ready for it. They can sit patiently while what is coming is still being prepared.
It was through this very ordinary practice in our home that I began to think about the way God sometimes deals with us.
Sometimes God calls us to a place and then allows us to wait there.
We often interpret waiting as the inconvenient period before something happens, but Scripture gives patience far greater significance than that. James writes, “But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing” (James 1:4 KJV).
Patience has a work.
That means there can be purpose in the period between being called and receiving what we are waiting for.
Called, but Still Waiting
When my children are sitting at the table, they are in the right place. Their waiting is not evidence that they came too early or misunderstood my instruction. I called them there.
That distinction matters.
There are times when we find ourselves waiting and immediately begin questioning whether we heard God correctly. We assume that if He really led us somewhere, things should have happened by now.
Yet throughout Scripture, being called and receiving were not always simultaneous.
David could be anointed and still have to wait before becoming king. Abraham could receive a promise and still wait for Isaac. Joseph could be shown something about his future and then live through years in which his circumstances looked nothing like what he had been shown.
Their waiting did not automatically invalidate what God had said.
Sometimes we can be exactly where God has called us to be and still have to wait.
Patience Is Learned Before It Is Needed
This is one reason I want my children to learn patience in something as ordinary as dinner.
Waiting is part of life.
There will eventually be things they want that I cannot simply place in front of them. There will be opportunities that take time, prayers that are not answered immediately, processes they cannot accelerate and situations in which impatience will not make anything happen faster.
Learning to wait at the dinner table may seem insignificant, but patience is often developed through ordinary opportunities long before we recognise how much we need it.
The same can be true spiritually.
We sometimes want God to remove every period of waiting, while God may be using some of those very periods to develop the patience we have been asking Him to give us.
Romans 5:3–4 tells us that “tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope.”
We may want the character without the process that develops it.
“But You’re Still Cooking”
My children's objection is perfectly reasonable from their perspective: “But Mummy, you’re still cooking.”
What they are really noticing is that the thing they are waiting for is not finished.
They can see evidence of preparation, but they cannot eat preparation.
They have to wait for completion.
There are seasons with God that feel much the same. We can see pieces moving, recognise that something is happening and perhaps even know what God has spoken, yet still be unable to receive the finished thing.
That is where patience becomes more than a nice Christian idea.
Patience asks us to remain without trying to force completion.
It teaches us that something still being prepared is not the same as something being withheld.
When We Become Weary of Waiting
Of course, there is a significant difference between waiting a few minutes for dinner and waiting months or years for something that matters deeply to us.
Some waiting becomes painful.
Scripture does not dismiss that reality. Proverbs 13:12 says, “Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.” There are waits that make us weary, particularly when we cannot understand why they have lasted so long.
This is why patience should never be reduced to telling someone simply to “wait a little longer.”
Biblical patience involves endurance. It is learning how to remain faithful when our preferred timing has passed and we still do not know when circumstances will change.
Galatians 6:9 acknowledges this when it tells us not to become weary in doing well, because there is a due season for reaping.
God is not asking us to pretend that waiting never becomes difficult. He is teaching us not to allow the difficulty of waiting to make every decision for us.
Do Not Leave the Table Simply Because You Are Tired of Waiting
This may be where the lesson becomes most important.
When waiting becomes uncomfortable, movement can feel like progress simply because we are doing something.
We may be tempted to manufacture an outcome, rush a process or abandon something because waiting has become more uncomfortable than acting.
There are certainly times when God tells us to move, and patience should never become an excuse for ignoring His direction. But there are also times when nothing about the instruction has changed. We are simply tired of waiting.
In those moments, maturity means learning the difference between God releasing us from the table and our impatience making us want to leave it.
Let Patience Do Its Work
Perhaps this is why James does not merely tell us to have patience. He tells us to let patience have her perfect work.
There is something patience is producing.
When my children sit at the table while I finish preparing dinner, I already know that the meal is coming. They do not need to follow me into the kitchen every thirty seconds. They do not need to ask repeatedly whether I have forgotten them. They do not need to find something else to eat because the plate has not arrived quickly enough.
They need to learn how to wait.
And sometimes, so do we.
There are seasons when God will call us to act immediately, and there are seasons when He will require movement, courage and decisive obedience. But there will also be seasons when He allows us to sit in the space between His instruction and its outcome.
Those seasons are not necessarily empty.
Patience may be doing some of its deepest work there.
The table may be ready for you before what you are waiting for is ready to be placed upon it.
If God has genuinely called you there, do not assume that the waiting means something has gone wrong.
Sometimes He is preparing what is coming, while teaching us how to wait for it.