On Waiting

I waited patiently for the Lord;
he inclined to me and heard my cry.
-Psalm 40:1

For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation.
-Psalm 62:1

Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.
-Isaiah 40:31

The Lord is good to those who wait for him,
to the soul that seeks him.
It is good that one should wait quietly
for the salvation of the Lord.
-Lamentations 3:25-26

These are beautiful promises, aren’t they?
Goodness. Strength and salvation. Running without growing weary. Walking without becoming faint. Flying with eagle’s wings. All beautiful promises.
We love these promises.

But do we believe them?

We may love these promises, but we have a hard time believing them.
Who receives the benefit of these promises? Those who wait.

We don’t believe the promises of God, because we don’t believe in waiting. (You can tweet this.)

Waiting is hard. It’s a waste of time. We have a life to live, things to do. Why waste time waiting?

We hate waiting.
Who loves waiting in traffic?
Who loves sitting in the waiting room?
Who loves waiting in line?

Or even worse.
Waiting to get asked on a date.
Waiting for a job.
Waiting for the doctor to call with the test results.
Waiting to know what is next in life.

We hate waiting.
We do all that we can to avoid it.

Why wait? Because scripture teaches that it is good to wait, that God is good to those who wait.

But we don’t know how to wait. We live in a microwave culture that does everything it can to skip the waiting. We’ve never learned how to wait.

What if we learned to wait? We need to learn why to wait, how to wait, what to do while waiting. We need to develop a Christian theology of waiting.

I’m going to attempt to develop just that–a Christian theology of waiting. This is the first of a series of posts that will explore the Christian practice of waiting.

Perhaps by learning to wait we can experience the goodness of God–even in our waiting. (You can tweet this, too.)

Your turn: What do you hate about waiting? Tell us in the comments.