Years ago, managers at a Houston airport noticed their customers had lodged many complaints about long waits at baggage claim. Their first solution was to hire more baggage handlers in order to make the loading and unloading process as efficient as possible. And it worked. The average wait time at each baggage claim was only eight minutes. Very fast for the industry. Yet the complaints persisted. People were still angry about waiting so long to receive their bags.
The managers then commissioned a study and realized the wait times at their airport were within industry norms; their customers were waiting a normal amount of time. Still, the number of complaints alarmed them.
Looking into the issue more deeply, the airport managers realized it took most flyers only a single minute to walk from their gates to baggage claim. Once they arrived, they spent an average of seven minutes waiting for their bags. Those seven minutes seemed to be the root of the problem.
As an experiment, the managers arranged things so that passengers had to walk a longer distance between their gates and baggage claim. After the change, most people walked eight to ten minutes and found their bags waiting when they arrived.
The complaints stopped.
As one researcher noted: "Americans spend roughly thirty-seven billion hours each year waiting in line. The dominant cost of waiting is an emotional one: stress, boredom, that nagging sensation that one's life is slipping away. The last thing we want to do with our dwindling leisure time is squander it in stasis."1
Or, as the old song says, "The waiting is the hardest part."2
David knew much about the pain of waiting. He lived for almost ten years in the terrible tension between God's promise to make him king and Saul's desire to make him dead. David had killed a giant and become a hero — but he had to live the life of a fugitive. He was an anointed king — but he had to live like a beast of the fields. He was desperate.
Out of the pain in his heart, he cried out to the Lord. And out of that furnace of his desperation came the incredible words of Psalm 13:
How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, Having sorrow in my heart daily?
How long will my enemy be exalted over me?
Consider and hear me, O Lord my God; Enlighten my eyes,
Lest I sleep the sleep of death;
Lest my enemy say,
"I have prevailed against him";
Lest those who trouble me rejoice when I am moved.
But I have trusted in Your mercy;
My heart shall rejoice in Your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord,
Because He has dealt bountifully with me.
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