Be reminded that your active waiting is an act of worship. The whole purpose of worship is to turn our eyes to the hills from where our help comes. Worship allows us to sing and meditate through all the Psalms that David penned while in extreme periods of distress.
Entering a new year is often an exciting time to hope, plan, and dream. How fitting that the new year always follows Advent, which conjures similar feelings and emotions. Advent is a season of hope, longing, and yearning for the coming of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. If it could be summed up in one word, that word would be “waiting.”
I don't know about you, but for me, waiting is hard. Waiting takes faith—waiting takes trust—waiting takes patience. Those three adjectives aren't natural to us. I would venture that many of us, coming into this new year full of hope would love to be able to boldly proclaim what the prophet Isaiah said,
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you! As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil, come down to make your name known to your enemies and cause the nations to quake before you! For when you did awesome things that we did not expect, you came down, and the mountains trembled before you. Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him. (Isaiah 64:1-4, NIV)
The rest of the chapter highlights the importance of trusting and praying to God. Through that process of trusting and praying, there is a process of waiting. But the glaring "elephant in the room" is, how do we wait? What is the proper way to wait? What does it actually look like to wait? How can we tell the woman who is anxiously waiting for the court date when she may lose her child to wait? How do we say to the man anxiously waiting to begin chemotherapy to wait on the Lord? There must be an instruction manual for those longings and yearnings.
An answer can be found in Isaiah 30:18 (NIV), "Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!”
Isn't it peculiar and yet beautiful that the Lord is actively waiting at the beginning of the verse? Check it out, "Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you." Other versions substitute the word “longs” for “wait. Why is the Lord waiting? The Great I Am is waiting to be gracious to us.
Psalm 84:11 tells us that the Lord God will not hold back any good thing from those who are upright. Could it actually be for our good that the Lord waits to be gracious towards us? If that is the case, it can then be juxtaposed that it is also for our good to wait on the Lord. Everything that God has commanded us to do, He did through the Gospel. Consider how much pain Jesus endured not only on the cross but also living among sinful people. The pain of rejection, blasphemy, being spat on, watching people go to prison, constantly having to defend himself, being tortured and ultimately being crucified. That suffering on earth is an example of the Lord being gracious towards us because Jesus went through all of that, for us!
Isaiah then continues in verse 30:18 by saying that God will rise up to show us compassion and that He is a God of justice. No act of mercy and justice was more significant than the event we just celebrated—the birth of Jesus. Afterwards, mercy and justice were brought to a head by sacrificing that same Jesus, followed by His resurrection and ascension. Let us not forget the completion of that mercy and justice when Jesus comes back!
With that reminder, hopefully it helps you to wait at least a little longer. Be reminded that your active waiting is an act of worship. The whole purpose of worship is to turn our eyes to the hills from where our help comes. Worship allows us to sing and meditate through all the Psalms that David penned while in extreme periods of distress. Psalm 68:5-6 praises God for being a father to the fatherless and defender of widows. Psalm 41:17 points out that David is poor and needy, yet the Lord still thinks of him.
This act of waiting is not only remembering God's promises by going through different Psalms, but it is also petitioning the Lord and trusting that he hears our cries. That is what makes waiting active; it's not just a passive trust; instead, it is a leap of faith. If you look at the entire chapter at Psalm 41, you'll see that immediately following Psalm 41:17, David asks that God not delay saving him. Let us not be afraid to ask God for help in the waiting. Don't hesitate to petition the pain, problem, or situation to be resolved without delay. More than asking, we trust that even if the waiting continues more prolonged than we desire, the Lord is loving and gracious to us, and we can confidently declare with faith, "Blessed are all who wait for him!" May we wait for him with expectancy and urgency. May our active waiting be a form of worship.