The Reality of Waiting
The first weeks of excitement and anticipation were suddenly swallowed up with the words, “There is no heartbeat.” As the days and months after her loss slog slowly by, Jane begins to wonder if her first pregnancy will be her last. Will the Lord again open her womb? The longer she waits and prays and hopes, the more hopeless and desperate she feels.
Bob has been battling cancer for months. His days, once crammed with activity and work, are now filled with crippling pain, unshakeable fatigue, and waiting. Waiting for scan reports, waiting for a resolution, waiting for some answer.
Susan’s husband lost his job five months ago. Despite diligently applying for various jobs, he finds that nothing is presenting itself. Their savings are slowly diminishing, as are their hopes of buying a home and settling down before winter. Susan wonders how much longer she can wait.
Waiting is difficult. Living in modern-day America exacerbates the difficulty. We live in a time of soundbites, fast-paced movies, fast food. We have learned to expect immediacy. We want our dinner done in less than thirty minutes, grumble when waiting at a red light, get anxious if our blood test results don’t come in before bedtime. We are an impatient lot, ill equipped to wait well.
But waiting is part of being human. God, who is outside of time, made us time-bound creatures and breathed time restrictions into the very fibers of creation. We see it clearly in the creation account. Over and over, we read the refrain: “There was evening and morning.” Nor are these time restraints portrayed as evil or a result of the fall. Rather, time, like food and friends, is good. So too is the fruit of living in a time-bound world as time-bound creatures: waiting. “Every thought that we produce, every word that we speak, every conscious moment exists in time. That means that waiting is a crucial part of being created in time.”
God has a good purpose for our waiting. We will explore what God does in and through our waiting. Is He silent, or does He speak? What does waiting reveal about us? God? Our faith? In order to answer these questions we will look at examples of waiting in the story of Abraham, the Israelite exile, and the larger narrative of waiting for the consummation. First, we will focus on God—what He does in our waiting and what He reveals about Himself through our waiting; second (in the next article) we will shift our focus to how God uses seasons of waiting to change us.
What God Does in Our Waiting
Among the most well-known biblical stories of waiting is that of Abraham waiting for the fulfillment of God’s promises of land and offspring. God called Abraham out of his country, away from what he knew, promising that He would make of him a great nation and a blessing to all the nations of the earth (Gen. 12:1–2). That was when he was seventy-five years old and childless (Gen. 12:4). For the next twenty-five years Abraham would wander through unknown lands, wage wars, acquire wealth, and wait for the fulfillment of God’s promise. What was God doing while Abraham waited?
Four times, God explicitly restates and solidifies the promise He made to Abraham in Genesis 12. He did this through making a covenant, illustrating His promise with visible signs, and adding detail to His previous promise (see Gen 13:14–18; 14:18–20; 15; 17; 18:1–21.) At other times He implicitly assures Abraham of His promise. For example, He twice protects Sarah’s womb (Gen. 12:10–20; 20). Finally, after twenty-five years of God’s assuring Abraham of His faithfulness to fulfill His promise, Abraham receives the promised child.
However, though Isaac’s birth fulfilled part of God’s promise to Abraham, it was not the fulfillment of His covenant promise to bless all the nations through Abraham. The birth of Isaac was yet another sign God gave Abraham pointing to a greater promise—the promise of a Savior and an eternal kingdom. “Abraham and Sarah foreshadowed their descendants, who had to wait until ‘the fullness of time’ (Gal. 4:4) when God would bring about the Son who is so much greater than Isaac. It is this Son who would truly laugh in the face of death by triumphing over it in the resurrection—God’s climactic miracle.” Because God was not silent during Abraham’s season of waiting, He proved Himself trustworthy and able to fulfill that greater promise. He used the season of waiting to reveal Himself to Abraham—and all who read the account today. So too, with the Israelites’ time of extensive waiting during their exile in Babylon.
In this case, even before the Israelites were taken captive, God was speaking to them, preparing them for a season of waiting. Through prophets, God warned the Israelites time and again that because of their rebellion they would be taken captive and would remain in that captivity for seventy years (Isa. 6:8–13; Jer. 25:11–12; 37:11–17; 38:14–18; Ezek. 4–5). Nor did His word fail. Rather, not only did the Israelites go into exile to Babylon, but also events unfolded exactly as God has said they would—down to the king’s losing his eyes and the destruction of the temple (Jer. 39:1–10; 52:12–23).
For seventy years, the Israelites lived as subjects, first of Babylon and then of Persia. During this long season of waiting to return home, God continued to speak to them through prophets, reminding them of their sin, comforting them, expressing His sorrow over their circumstances, predicting the fall of their enemies (see Isa. 30:18; 40:1–5; Jer. 50–51; Lamentations; Hos. 2). He assures them of His commitment to His covenant and their restoration (Ezek. 16:59–63; 20:33–34; 37). And these prophets often communicate God’s message in visible and shocking ways (Hos. 1:2–11; 3; Ezek. 37). God also spoke to the Israelites in implicit ways: for example, saving Shadrak, Meshak, and Abednego from the deadly fires; preserving Daniel from the jaws of the lions (Dan. 3:8–30; 6), events which testified to God’s presence and promise-keeping—He will preserve a remnant (Isa. 35). So too, as He had with Abraham, He used the season of waiting to direct His people to the Savior to come who would build an eternal temple and kingdom (Isa. 42:1–4; 50:4–11; 53; Ezek. 40:1–44:3). So, when the Israelites were finally permitted to return to rebuild their temple, they were able to testify to the goodness of God’s character revealed through their waiting. They were able to continue waiting with confident hope for the Savior.
But what about us today? What about about those of us who are waiting, not for the Savior’s birth, but His glorious return and the consummation? Does God still speak to us in our season of waiting as He did to Abraham and the Israelites? Most assuredly, though today, He does so not through prophets, many and varied signs, or personal revelations. Today, God speaks to us during our times of waiting in three ways: His word, the sacraments, and providence.
The Bible in its entirety is a testimony to God’s faithfulness to keep His promises to us; most significantly, those concerning Christ. Each story, poem, law, or lament points us to Christ. And in Christ, we find God’s promises fulfilled and assurance that those yet unfulfilled will be (Luke 24:27; 1 Cor. 1:20). Not to mention the details of other promises God gave and kept which testify to His trustworthiness, for example, His promise to give Hezekiah an extra twenty years of life (Isa. 38:1–8), His promise to preserve Lot though the fire of heaven rained down upon his home (Gen. 18:32; 19:29), or His promise to rebuild the temple after three days (John 2:18–22). To this immense testimony of the word, God adds the testimony of the sacraments.
The sacraments are God’s visible, tangible signs to us that Christ—who has accomplished our salvation—will not fail to accomplish the consummation of all things. Every time we take the Lord’s Supper we are reminded of Christ’s body truly broken and blood truly spilt (Matt. 26:26–29). We are reminded that, even now, that same broken body symbolized by the elements is in heaven, eagerly anticipating and preparing for the day He receives His bride (John 14:3; Eph. 5:25–27). It is a foretaste of the promised feast of the lamb (Matt. 26:9, Rev. 19: 6–9). And as we are spiritually nourished by this foretaste, so we are assured that Christ—who laid down His life for His bride—will surely come to take her home (see WSC Q/A 168). Much the same message is communicated in baptism.
Baptism, far from an act of man, is a visible sign of God’s promises. Each baptism is a reminder that just as surely as the waters are sprinkled on the head of the baptized, so surely Christ’s blood sprinkled on all who believe will cleanse us of all sin. It is a call to young and old alike to lay hold of the promises of salvation, being assured that He who promised is faithful—even as we can see that faithfulness displayed in the ordinary works of providence.
When we look back over the course of our life, we can see God’s faithfulness and care from before our first breath. Who gave you breath? Who sustained your life until now? Who gently drew you to Himself despite your many protestations? Who gently and persistently sanctifies you—promising to continue until His job is complete? Who works all things, all events, trials, and circumstances to your good? Our lives are a story testifying to God’s faithfulness. So why would He who was faithful from our birth not likewise be faithful through the difficult times of waiting?
Though God speaks to us through these simple yet powerful means in any and all seasons of life, it is often through difficult times of waiting that God uses these means to reveal more of Himself than we had otherwise known, just as the promises and signs God gave to Abraham and the exiled Israelites revealed God’s character in sharper relief during their protracted seasons of waiting. But God does more through waiting than reveal Himself and testify to His faithfulness. He transforms us. It is to this aspect of waiting we will turn in our next article.
1. Scott Redd, “What Does It Mean to Wait on the Lord?,” Tabletalk, April 2024, https://tabletalkmagazine.com/article/2024/04/what-does-it-mean-to-wait-on-the-lord/.
2. Eric Watkins, “Waiting on God,” May 25, 2014, https://www.ligonier.org/learn/devotionals/waiting-on-god.
……………….Mrs. Elisabeth Bloechl is a pastor’s wife and homeschooling mom living in Minnesota.