Waiting on the Lord

When I was young, my family gathered every morning after breakfast for devotions. Dad read from the Daily Bread devotional booklet and then prayed. After several minutes of this, I started to fidget. After several more minutes, I began to do the small cough.

“Ahem.” Doesn’t he realize that I still have to brush my teeth and walk to the bus stop? Has he forgotten about me? Does he know what time it is?

I don’t think my throat clearing made one bit of difference to Dad. He kept praying until he was good and ready to be done. And, for the record, I never missed the bus.

These days my impatience rears its ugly head when I’m behind the wheel of my car. Our small town has a 716-acre lake smack-dab in its center, and work, church, and almost everything of importance are on the exact opposite side of the lake from my home. That makes for a lot of driving slowly behind people who are out just for the sheer pleasure of driving around the lake and not out for the immediate need to be on time to work, which if I’d just left a few minutes sooner, wouldn’t be such a problem.

“Ahem.”

Awareness, I’ve heard, is the first step to healing.

My newly-admitted awareness of my impatience led me to think quite a lot lately about waiting on God. That, in all seriousness, can be quite a struggle for many people, especially as we hope and pray for an end to this insidious COVID-19 virus.

We live in an instant-gratification culture. We send a text and get cross when we don’t receive a response within minutes. We order items online and two days later they show up on our doorstep. We turn on our televisions and watch a movie or a show on demand. We are spoiled.

No surprise, then, that our patience with God is occasionally tried. If our culture is so accommodating, why isn’t our Lord?

I have a dear friend who is 51 years old and never been married. Recently she discovered that the man she has been getting to know, the man she had cherished hopes about, has a girlfriend. She has waited for decades for God to answer her prayers about marriage. She’s getting tired of waiting.

I spent the summer of 1989 in Thailand on a mission trip. We stayed the last few days with a Christian family in a small Muslim village. The main thing I remember is that the wife prayed for her husband to become a Christian for 27 years before he finally gave his life to the Lord. Twenty-seven years. That’s a long time to wait on the Lord. But He rewarded her faith.

Two stories: one of impatience. One of never-ending hope.

The truth of both stories is that God never stops listening. It’s just that He knows, better than we do, the perfect timing for His plans.

The Bible offers many wonderful verses about waiting on the Lord, and I encourage you to look them up. A few classics include Isaiah 30:18, which says that all who wait for Him are blessed; Psalm 130:5, which encourages us to put our hope in His Word as we wait on Him, and Psalm 27:14 (NIV®), Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.

Another favorite of mine, Micah 7:7 (NIV®), says, But as for me, I watch in hope for the Lord, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me.

I love Micah’s faith. Our God will hear us. His answers may not be what we want or expect, or in the timing we choose, but He hears. We are not crying into the wind. When we wait in hope and in His Word, we will be blessed. And that is worth the wait.

Gretchen O’Donnell is an island girl living on the prairies of southwestern Minnesota, with her husband of 24 years and two argumentative cats. Their youngest child is, thankfully, still at home and their oldest two are off at college. Gretchen has prayed for patience more than once. She loves telling stories of her ordinary life to help people see the theological truths in their own everyday lives. She has a weekly faith-based blog, The Disheveled Theologian, which can be found at www.gretchenodonnell.com.