WEDNESDAY IN THE WORD    January 18, 2023

How Must We Wait?

Psalm 27:14 NRSV

Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!

There will always be those who believe it is futile to wait for God. But they deliberately forget that God has already come. God came to the Garden of Eden; came to Noah; came to Mount Sinai and he came in the person of Jesus, and God will come again. In fact, God comes to us many times throughout our lives if our hearts are receptive and our eyes are open. Still, there are many who give in to doubt and despair.

How do we wait for God? What should our attitude be in this time of waiting? The first way that we wait for Christ is: We wait patiently. The hardest part of waiting is waiting. Waiting involves time, and we don’t know when our waiting will be over. If we could wait a minute or two it would be one thing, but it often involves a great deal of time.

I was in the store the other day and the person in front of me wanted to leave, but her receipt was slow coming out of the cash register. She started making motions with her hand trying to speed up the printing of her receipt. As I watched her I was amused until I realized how many times I have done the very same thing. I become impatient waiting for the printer to print, the water to boil and the light to change. We who live in this culture of convenience and instant gratification have lost the art of waiting. But there are people in the USA waiting for clean water, waiting for food, waiting for affordable housing, and the list continues. We are irritated when the wait time is not moving fast enough for our technology issue to be resolved. And we wait.

Patience is fruit of the Spirit. It is a spiritual quality that God wants us to develop. But often we are irritated if something doesn’t happen immediately, and we might lose hope. Yet, hope is essential to life. We must wait. We wait expectantly. God is busy bringing about his full plan for the world and for us. In God’s perfect timing God will birth that plan. And we must be ready for the plan God has for us.

We are all sitting in some type of waiting room. But it is how we wait, and what we do with the waiting, that is important. Waiting does not mean just sitting down and doing nothing, even when the waiting becomes long. You have to be watching and looking toward God because he fulfills his promise. You have to believe God is going to do it. We cannot get ahead of God or try to work things out ourselves, for we could miss what God is doing if we are just waiting without expecting God to really come through.

“But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son.” Galatians 4:4.

Before it was time, the birth of Christ would have been premature, but when the time came, nothing could hold him back. When it is time for Christ to return, nothing will be able to hold him back.

Wait faithfully. To be faithful means to be full of faith that completely trusts and depends on God. It is active faith, not passive. It is a faith that delights in doing the Master’s will. Waiting in faithful obedience is essential in our journey.

Amen!

Rev. Carole

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