How Do We Wait Well?
“Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” Psalm 27:14
I think that waiting is the hardest thing to do in life. Sometimes there’s absolutely no other option but to wait. We have to wait every day. From small things like waiting in line and waiting in traffic to more significant times such as waiting for our hearts to heal after a loss or waiting to learn news from a doctor.
Since we face waiting everyday, how should we live with a godly perspective? Waiting either makes us more selfish, demanding, and me-centered or, it causes us to long more for the thing that we’re waiting for. We either become impatient and irritable or our desires for the awaited grow stronger and deeper. If waiting usually feels painful and exhausting, why would God have his people wait so often?
As difficult as it is, God uses waiting to shape us and our desires. We are forced to stop our attempts at making our own plans and schemes and trust God to bring about his ways.
Waiting helps us to lean into God and learn more of who he is as we cry out to him. Often we have exhausted our own resources for fixing our problem, and we have nothing left. In this place, we are often freed up to be needy before God, begging him for help and relief.
If we trust Jesus as our Lord, we belong to him, and we know that eventually all waiting will end. Ultimately, we wait for Jesus to return, ending all pain and sadness. While we wait for that day, we wait with hope.
We can be sure that our God and Father will keep all his promises to us and will give us all that we need to wait for that day.
For Further Reading: Psalm 130:5-6