Waiting on God

Waiting is the part nobody volunteers for. We can manage a hard task; what wears us down is the not-knowing — the prayer said a hundred times with no visible reply, the door that will not open, the season that will not turn.

Notice the psalm says it twice. Wait for the Lord at the start, and again at the end, with be strong and take heart held between them like something being protected. Whoever wrote this knew you would need telling more than once.

And this is not the waiting of a man in a queue. The word carries the sense of a rope drawn tight — tension, attention, expectancy. Not passive. Not resigned. Waiting the way you wait for someone you are certain is coming.

Silence is not the same as absence. Some of the most important work God does is done quietly, in the interval, in you rather than around you.