Did you hear about this guy out in Los Angeles, Larry is his name?  Larry always wanted to fly, but poor eyesight kept him out of the Air Force.  But he always wanted to fly, and at some point in middle age he got this idea.  His idea was to hook up 45 helium-filled weather balloons to his lawn chair, and strap himself in with some sandwiches, and a pellet gun, and a six-pack of beer.  His plan was to hover 30 feet above his backyard for a few hours, then shoot the balloons one at a time until he came back down to earth.  Sounds reasonable enough.  But when he took off, with 45 helium balloons attached to his lawn chair, Larry did not level off at 30 feet.  He didn’t level off at 100 feet, or 1,000 feet.  Larry stopped climbing at 16,000 feet.  At that altitude, he was reluctant to shoot out any balloons.  So he drifted along, he drifted with his beer and sandwiches into the airspace of the Los Angeles International Airport.  The pilots would say to each other, “You’re not going to believe this.”  After several hours, Larry shot a few balloons and descended into some power lines, where he was rescued.  The spokesman for the FAA said, “We know he broke some part of the Federal Aviation Act, and as soon as we figure out which part, a charge will be filed.”  As they led Larry away, a reporter asked him why he did it.  And Larry replied, “A man can’t just sit there.” 

A man or a woman can’t just sit there and let the world go by.  And yet, we sit there all the time, don’t we?  We have talents we might use, things we might do, people we might help, and yet sometimes we just sit there.  The call goes out for someone to volunteer and we assume they’re talking about someone else.  We’re just not in the right mood sometimes, not in the right frame of mind.  Sometimes we do just sit there.  Sometimes the work God has for us is just too big, it’s too difficult, too inconvenient, and we just don’t want to do it.

When I was in my youth group in high school, once a month we went door-to-door proselytizing is I believe the word, we would knock on doors and tell people about Jesus Christ and give our own personal testimony and invite them to church.  I have to tell you that I hated this.  I know I appear to be outgoing now, but I was introverted back then.  (I’ll have to tell you about the summer I sold vacuum cleaners door-to-door.  It was the longest three days of my life.)  I hated going door-to-door and talking with complete strangers.  And everyone knew I hated it.  One night, someone told me to pray, just pray, and God would help me.  So as we knocked on the door, I prayed, I prayed, I prayed hard, I prayed that no one would be home. 

Sometimes we just don’t want to do it.  I remember reading about this man who woke up in the middle of the night in bed and it was as if God was right there, speaking to him, he heard God distinctly asking him to let go of himself and live for God, truly live for what God might want him to do.  He remembers hearing this call from God so clearly.  But he remembers just as clearly turning over in his bed and going back to sleep and saying no to God, saying no, he wasn’t going to do it.  Sometimes we just don’t want to do it, we just are not going to do it. 

Sometimes we just have our heads in the clouds, like Larry in his lawn chair at 16,00 feet,  like the disciples, and we don’t know quite what to do.  We have all these good intentions, but we don’t know what to do.  The disciples were standing there looking up into heaven, as if there were something up there for them to do.  And these two angels appeared, these two men dressed in white, and they asked the disciples, “What are you looking at?  What are you spending your time doing here looking up into heaven?  Your work is not up there; your work is down here.”  Your work is right here.”  Have you heard that expression, that someone is “So heavenly minded, they’re no earthly good.”  The two angels asked, “Why are you gazing up into heaven.  You have work to do.” 

The problem is that the work they were given immediately, there would be other work later on, but the work they were given immediately was to wait.  Wait.  Did you catch that in the text?  Jesus ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father, wait there for the Holy Spirit to come.  The Holy Spirit will come and guide you and lead you and take you to places you have never been before, but for right now your job is to wait. 

Our Old Testament lesson, from Habakkuk, gives us this image of a watchman waiting on the ramparts, the watchman is waiting for a word from the Lord, he’s waiting to hear what the Lord will say, waiting to see what this vision from the Lord will be.  And it seems like it’s taking an awfully long time, he’s getting impatient, but the watchman is told to wait, if it seems to tarry, wait, it will surely come, this word, this vision, so just wait. 

Sometimes the hardest work we will ever do will be to wait, wait for circumstances to change, wait for the time to be right, wait upon the Lord to see what he will bring to pass.  It’s what we do with our waiting that will determine where we might go.  It’s what we do with our waiting that will begin to turn what if into what is. 

A couple of years ago, on vacation in upstate New York, we visited Hyde Park, the home of Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Roosevelt, as you probably know, contracted polio when he was only 39 years old.  One day, he had this brilliant political career ahead of him, and the next day he couldn’t even walk, he couldn’t move his body from the chest down.  Our tour guide in Hyde Park showed us this long dirt road that lead from his house out to the main road.  And every day during those years of waiting, those years of trying to figure out what was next, Roosevelt would put on his leg braces and get on his crutches, and try to walk down that dirt road from his house out to the main road.  He would swing one dead leg and then the other and try to walk.  He did this every day, and he would always make it only so far.  But he tried this every day and every day he failed.  Every day he would fall somewhere along that dirt road, and someone would have to come and pick him up and carry him back to the house.  Not once did he make it all the way out to the main road, not once.  In all those years he never once made it, but he did become President of the United States. 

It matters how you wait.  It matters whether you wait in fear or with courage.  It matters whether you wait in doubt or with hope. It matters whether you wait thinking I’m going to have to do this all myself, or you wait to see what God will do, wait upon the Lord. 

So, as this quote goes, strike a person down with polio so he will never walk again, and you may have a Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Lock a person away in prison for 27 long years, and you may have a Nelson Mandela.  Bury him in the snows of Valley Forge, and you may have a George Washington.  Raise him in abject poverty, and you may have an Abraham Lincoln.  Label him as too stupid to learn and you may have a Thomas Edison.  Tell a boy who loved to sketch and draw that he has no talent and you may have a Walt Disney.  Burn him so severely at the age of eight in a schoolhouse fire that doctors say he will never walk again, and you may have a Glenn Cunningham, who set the world record in the mile.  Deafen a genius composer so that he cannot even hear a note of the music he is composing and you may have a Beethoven.  Strike him down with cancer and give him a 50/50 chance of even surviving, let alone of ever riding a bike again, and you may have a Lance Armstrong. 

This is the type of person you may have, the type of person you may be, depending on how you wait, how you wait through the difficult circumstances, how you wait when it looks like all is lost, how you wait for the vision to become clear, how you wait upon the Lord.  Of course, the other thing the disciples were doing while they waited, the other thing they were doing was praying.  Prayer can be some pretty hard work.  As they waited, we are told, the disciples were constantly devoting themselves to prayer. 

Bill Hybels, the pastor of Willow Creek Church, out in a suburb of Chicago, in one of his books, tells about a baptism they had one Sunday morning at church.  Many were baptized and publicly affirmed their faith in Jesus Christ.  After the service Bill bumped into a woman in the stairwell, and she was crying.  So Bill stopped and asked if she was all right, and the woman said that no, she wasn’t all right, she was struggling, her mother had been baptized that day.  Well Bill couldn’t understand what the problem was, baptism was supposed to be a joyous occasion.  But the woman said, “I prayed for her every day for 20 years, that her life would turn around.”  Bill told the woman that she was going to have to help him understand this, tell him why she was crying.  And the woman said, “I’m crying because I came so close – so close – to giving up on her.  I mean, after five years, I said to myself, Who needs this?  God obviously isn’t listening.  And after ten years I said, Why am I wasting my breath?  After 15 years I said, This is absurd.  I’m wasting my time.  After 19 years I said, I’m just a fool to keep praying.  But I guess I just kept praying, even though my faith was weak.  I kept praying, and she gave her life to Christ, and she was baptized today.”  The woman said, “I will never doubt the power of prayer again. But to think, I almost gave up on her.”    

Now for me, those words on the power of prayer are so moving, but what moves me too to keep waiting sometimes through the circumstances, waiting for the Holy Spirit, waiting for the vision, waiting upon the Lord, what moves me too are those last words, “I almost gave up on her.”  I almost gave up.