I will wait at the fords in the wilderness until word comes from you to inform me.”

• 2 Samuel 15:28

When David had gone a short distance beyond the summit, there was Ziba, the steward of Mephibosheth, waiting to meet him. He had a string of donkeys saddled and loaded with two hundred loaves of bread, a hundred cakes of raisins, a hundred cakes of figs and a skin of wine.

• 2 Samuel 16:1

Then they said to each other, “What we’re doing is not right. This is a day of good news and we are keeping it to ourselves. If we wait until daylight, punishment will overtake us. Let’s go at once and report this to the royal palace.”

• 2 Kings 7:9

Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.

• Psalm 27:14

I thought of a quiz about waiting was in order.  After all, those ones who have been waiting since last Saturday for the next quiz have waited long enough.  I would say tens or hundreds, but these quizzes, many of them, gain life after “waiting” around to be discovered.  The list of most viewed posts is peppered with quizzes, but rarely a lot when it first comes out.

Am I sensing people who have time to kill so, “Hey, here’s a quiz!”  I hope their reason for viewing is more honorable than simply killing time.

So, as usual, the questions are about verses containing the word “wait.”  The questions may be about who is waiting or the reason for waiting, or maybe not waiting, but not all of them. I have 129 verses in the NIV from which to choose.  The questions are in biblical order.

The Questions:

	Question	Bible References	Answers
1	The first two mentions of “wait” in the NIV have only one verse between them.  After an initial failure, someone sent something out a window.  He waited seven days to try again, and then waiting to do the same thing again.  Who sent what out the window, and what was the ultimate purpose?
2	When the overseers went to Pharoah to complain about having to gather their own straw, Pharoah called them lazy and told them to work that much harder.  When these overseers left Pharoah’s presence, who were the two Levites who were waiting on them?
3	Moses, the elders, and a few others were going up Mount Sinai.  At one point, Moses turned to the elders to say that Aaron and Hur and the elders must wait at that point, and “we” will continue on.  Aaron and Hur would answer any disputes.  Who continued up on Mount Sinai other than Moses?
4	When a woman gives birth, she is ceremonially unclean according to Levitical Law, but there is a circumstance where the waiting period is twice as long.  What is that circumstance?
5	Some people wanted to partake in the Passover, but they were ceremonially unclean for having handled a dead body.  Moses had to wait on the answer from the Lord.  What was the answer?
6	In the rules about refuge cities, what happens to someone who lies in wait to kill someone and then runs to a city of refuge?
7	After the first Ai defeat, God instructed Joshua in how to trap the people of Ai.  They were to repeat the attack, but have people placed west of the city, between Bethel and Ai to do what?
8	Ehud, the judge of the Israelites, presented King Eglon a tribute, but then returned to say something in private.  The king dismissed everyone else.  Ehud stabbed the king and calmly walked out the doors, locking them behind him.  The king’s attendants waited until Ehud was safely far away.  Why did they wait?
9	Ruth explained what had happened at the threshing floor, and Naomi said for her to wait, that the man will not stop until this matter was settled.  Who was the man and what was the matter to be settled?
10	What did Saul do after waiting for seven days for Samuel to arrive and Samuel was late?

I feel the need to defend myself against one of my wife’s often-told true stories.

I hated to wait in lines.  My wife would illustrate my lack of patience by telling the story of how she was a lowly officer’s wife, and I refused to stand in line at the telephone office at the Post Exchange (PX).  This line was known for being horrifically long and slow.  It was especially slow at the only time that I could be there, my lunch hour.

The way my wife told the story was that I refused and she had to stand in line, holding the hand of a boy who was less than two-years-old, to ask the telephone office to send a repairman to our apartment because the aforementioned two-year-old had pulled on the cord (I think three or four times in spite of our efforts to hide the cord) and the telephone, German made and not the best ever German engineering, would shatter when it hit our hardwood floor, plastic flying everywhere.

I can hear the sympathy pouring out for my wife already but wait!  Wait!  She had friends in the stairwell that babysat.  She made up the part about standing in line while a boy nearly two was at her side.  Besides, she would not subject the boy to the steel-eyed clerk at the window.  After all, he made a habit of breaking the phone.  But then again, I met the repairman a couple of times – tall, muscular, handsome, blonde, blue-eyed, and my wife greeted him by his first name – hmmm, did my wife break the phone on at least one of those times?!?!?!  No, she did not, but she admitted that the repairman was handsome enough to be tempted to do it.

So, she was in line by herself.  She waited about an hour and a half each time.  I think once she waited about forty-five minutes.

And that was the rub for me.  I had one hour for lunch.  The PX was a twenty-minute drive from my office each way.  That meant the line would have to be less than twenty minutes or I would be back the next day, and the next, without ever getting the phone fixed.

Ah!  Getting that monkey off my back feels good, but then, you would have to believe my story for me to really be off the hook.  To be honest, I hate standing in line, but I did stand in line to vote.

Bible References:

	Question	Bible References	Answers
1	The first two mentions of “wait” in the NIV have only one verse between them.  After an initial failure, someone sent something out a window.  He waited seven days to try again, and then waiting to do the same thing again.  Who sent what out the window, and what was the ultimate purpose?	Genesis 8:8-12
2	When the overseers went to Pharoah to complain about having to gather their own straw, Pharoah called them lazy and told them to work that much harder.  When these overseers left Pharoah’s presence, who were the two Levites who were waiting on them?	Exodus 5:20
3	Moses, the elders, and a few others were going up Mount Sinai.  At one point, Moses turned to the elders to say that Aaron and Hur and the elders must wait at that point, and “we” will continue on.  Aaron and Hur would answer any disputes.  Who continued up on Mount Sinai other than Moses?	Exodus 24:13-14
4	When a woman gives birth, she is ceremonially unclean according to Levitical Law, but there is a circumstance where the waiting period is twice as long.  What is that circumstance?	Leviticus 12:1-5
5	Some people wanted to partake in the Passover, but they were ceremonially unclean for having handled a dead body.  Moses had to wait on the answer from the Lord.  What was the answer?	Numbers 9:8-11
6	In the rules about refuge cities, what happens to someone who lies in wait to kill someone and then runs to a city of refuge?	Deuteronomy 19:11-13
7	After the first Ai defeat, God instructed Joshua in how to trap the people of Ai.  They were to repeat the attack, but have people placed west of the city, between Bethel and Ai to do what?	Joshua 8:9
8	Ehud, the judge of the Israelites, presented King Eglon a tribute, but then returned to say something in private.  The king dismissed everyone else.  Ehud stabbed the king and calmly walked out the doors, locking them behind him.  The king’s attendants waited until Ehud was safely far away.  Why did they wait?	Judges 3:24-25
9	Ruth explained what had happened at the threshing floor, and Naomi said for her to wait, that the man will not stop until this matter was settled.  Who was the man and what was the matter to be settled?	Ruth 3:18
10	What did Saul do after waiting for seven days for Samuel to arrive and Samuel was late?	1 Samuel 13:7-14

While God tests our patience, a lot, I marvel at the people who campout in parking lots to get the Black Friday bargains or the early release of the new video games or to see the sneak peak for the monster blockbuster movie.

It makes me think of false god worship.  Would those same people wait two hours to get their phone fixed?  Would they wait thirty minutes in line to pay the rent?  How often would they cuss while stopped at a road construction flagger, and it is obvious no one has moved in either direction for some horribly long period of time – like a minute?

Yet, they can wait in line over night to waste their money on something that will have no real lasting effect on their lives.

Yes, there are 129 times the word “wait” (and variants like waiting and waited) is in the NIV.  Many of those times, it was someone waiting, but God commanded people, and us in general, to wait upon the Lord.  And I see very few wanting to wait for the Creator of the universe.  Do we give God less waiting time than the flagger at the construction site?  Maybe thirty seconds?

Why are we in such a hurry?  As C.S. Lewis wrote, “The Future…something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixtey minutes an hour, whatever he does whoever he is.” (C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters)

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The Answers:

	Question	Bible References	Answers
1	The first two mentions of “wait” in the NIV have only one verse between them.  After an initial failure, someone sent something out a window.  He waited seven days to try again, and then waiting to do the same thing again.  Who sent what out the window, and what was the ultimate purpose?	Genesis 8:8-12	Noah, after sending out a raven, sent out a dove.  He was seeing if the ground was dry enough to leave the ark.  First attempt with the dove, the dove could not find a perch.  Second attempt, the dove returned with an olive branch.  Third attempt, the dove did not return.
2	When the overseers went to Pharoah to complain about having to gather their own straw, Pharoah called them lazy and told them to work that much harder.  When these overseers left Pharoah’s presence, who were the two Levites who were waiting on them?	Exodus 5:20	Moses and Aaron, and they blamed their hardship on these two men who wanted Pharoah to set their people free.
3	Moses, the elders, and a few others were going up Mount Sinai.  At one point, Moses turned to the elders to say that Aaron and Hur and the elders must wait at that point, and “we” will continue on.  Aaron and Hur would answer any disputes.  Who continued up on Mount Sinai other than Moses?	Exodus 24:13-14	Joshua
4	When a woman gives birth, she is ceremonially unclean according to Levitical Law, but there is a circumstance where the waiting period is twice as long.  What is that circumstance?	Leviticus 12:1-5	If a girl is born, the woman waits two weeks and then 66 days for purification.  If a boy is born, the woman waits seven days, has the boy circumcised on the eighth day, and then only waits 33 days for purification.
5	Some people wanted to partake in the Passover, but they were ceremonially unclean for having handled a dead body.  Moses had to wait on the answer from the Lord.  What was the answer?	Numbers 9:8-11	Essentially, they wait a month, after they were no longer ceremonially unclean, and the ceremonially unclean was expanded to other reasons.
6	In the rules about refuge cities, what happens to someone who lies in wait to kill someone and then runs to a city of refuge?	Deuteronomy 19:11-13	He must be handed over to the avenging party to die.  No pity is to be given this person.
7	After the first Ai defeat, God instructed Joshua in how to trap the people of Ai.  They were to repeat the attack, but have people placed west of the city, between Bethel and Ai to do what?	Joshua 8:9	When Joshua retreated the next day, as he had the first time, there was a force lying in ambush to defeat the city of Ai.
8	Ehud, the judge of the Israelites, presented King Eglon a tribute, but then returned to say something in private.  The king dismissed everyone else.  Ehud stabbed the king and calmly walked out the doors, locking them behind him.  The king’s attendants waited until Ehud was safely far away.  Why did they wait?	Judges 3:24-25	They thought the king had locked the doors so that he could go into the inner room to “relieve” himself.
9	Ruth explained what had happened at the threshing floor, and Naomi said for her to wait, that the man will not stop until this matter was settled.  Who was the man and what was the matter to be settled?	Ruth 3:18	Boaz would ensure that he would get the first in line as kinsman-redeemer to publicly decline so that he could marry Ruth and redeem Naomi’s property.
10	What did Saul do after waiting for seven days for Samuel to arrive and Samuel was late?	1 Samuel 13:7-14	Saul offered the burnt offering that only a priest was allowed to offer.  Samuel prophesied that he would lose the kingdom for not obeying God.

Whether you did well on this quiz or, ummm, not so well, for the first video, here is Phil Wickham singing Wait.  I like his attitude and the reason for waiting.

Here is Lincoln Brewster singing While I Wait.  The first song talked about why we wait, and this one talks about what to do while we wait.

Here is MercyMe singing a song borne of the lockdown Hurry Up and Wait.  The video is priceless! And it answers one of my questions from that time. Now I know where all those rolls of toilet paper went!

Here is Healing Place Worship featuring Rylee and Stephen Tims singing Waiting.

And here is the Gaither Vocal Band singing one of the best of the many Gaither songs The King is Coming.  This is my favorite combination (Guy Penrod, David Phelps, Mark Lowry, and Bill Gaither), but none of the Vocal Band combinations are anything less than wonderful.

Why should we wait?  Didn’t you know?  The King is coming!

The second song, While I Wait, has a line in the chorus that sometimes miracles take time.  When I was the straw boss of maintenance training, the other guys put a sign up outside my cubicle “The impossible done while you wait, but a miracle might take a little time.”  I hated it!  The boss that we were assigned to believed the sign, and he was a dreamer.  What is the line in another song, “To dream the impossible dream?”  He lived by that song.  And I burned the midnight oil trying to make his impossible dreams come true.

If you like these Saturday morning Bible quizzes, but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Saturday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.