Make haste to help me, O LORD!" the psalmist David prayed (Ps.70:1) Like him, we don't like to wait. We dislike the long lines at supermarket checkout counters, and traffic jams downtown and around shopping malls. We hate to wait at the bank or at a restaurant.
And then there are the harder waits:
a childless couple waiting for a child;
a single person waiting for marriage;
an addict waiting for deliverance;
a spouse waiting for a kind and gentle word;
a worried patient waiting for a diagnosis from a doctor.
What we wait for, however, is far less important than what God is doing while we wait. In such times He works in us to develop those hard-to-achieve spiritual virtues of meekness, kindness, and patience with and to "rejoice and be glad" in Him (v.4)
F. B. Mayer said, "What a chapter might be written of God's delays! It is the mystery of which they are capable. What searching of heart, what analyzing of motives, what testings of word of God, what upliftings of soul... All these are associated with those weary days waiting, which are, nevertheless, big with spiritual destiny. --David Roper.
BE still, My child, and know that I am God!
Wait thou patiently-- I know the path and trod
so falter not, nor fear, nor think to run and hide,
For I, thy hope and strength, am waiting by thy side. --Hein
Wait thou patiently-- I know the path and trod
so falter not, nor fear, nor think to run and hide,
For I, thy hope and strength, am waiting by thy side. --Hein