Lamentations 3:25   The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.

We all seem to be waiting on something, and as the world moves faster we just seem to wait for more things. Waiting isn’t all bad. I tend to think of waiting as a wall to get over, something to be done with so I can get where I want to be. Sometimes things flow along smoothly and even the waiting seems effortless. Then there are times the waiting seems agonizing. As I grow older, God has taught me the beauty in the waiting.

Instead of a wall to get over, I think of it as a wall to sit next to and take in the view. This Lenten writing has taught me a think or two about waiting. There are different kinds of waiting for one thing. At first I was waiting with certain expectation that the words would come, and they did.  Waiting with expectation doesn’t seem nearly as painful.

Then like a brick wall, in the middle of this process I lost the sense of expectation. I groped around to find it, then I stopped trying to find it altogether. I wandered. And I guess that might be a little of what Jesus went through in the desert. But that’s the time when you find a quiet shady place to rest and surrender it up all over again. That’s why there are times when we are expressly commanded to wait. And instead of trying to scramble over the wall and figure things out on our own, we sit down, look around and enjoy the view.

Tomorrow I will go and see my niece who is beside herself with expectation that “Aunt Nori” is coming. Waiting for her is a painful and agonizing process. It’s hard for special needs kids, though she is getting much better; even so, she’s still on pins and needles. It’s not that we do anything extreme like go to theme parks. She doesn’t care nearly as much about that as just spending time with me doing the little things she loves to do because she loves me. She loves it because I enter her world.

And that my friends is what God wants from us too. He wants to enter our world and loves it when we enter His.

Because He loves us. Happy Waiting!

Isaiah 40:31   but they 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 30:18   Therefore the LORD waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the LORD is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.