My husband and I are reading the book of Isaiah together and it is remarkably full of hope. In the midst of terrible warnings and woes, there are also extravagant promises about the coming Messiah, about God saving His people, about everything broken one day being repaired.
But the fulfillment of those promises won’t come quickly. God’s people have to wait. God’s people have always had to wait with hope.
I don’t like waiting. I like my next day delivery from Amazon and my same day grocery pickup from Aldi. I like to swiftly pay my housesitter using Venmo. I like to get what I want, and do what I want, immediately when I want to.
I like to never have to wait.
But instant gratification is not good for us. We are training our own brains and hearts to not be able to wait.
That’s not a good life skill. It’s not a good spiritual practice either.
Nature itself teaches us. Tomatoes don’t just appear on the grocery shelf. They grow slowly on the vine, getting bigger, sweeter, juicier as they ripen. Those goldfinches we love here in Iowa, didn’t grow up here. They flew from southern Texas or Georgia to build their nest in your backyard. And that maple tree they are living in, it’s at least as old as you are–decades until it’s big enough to house a goldfinch or hold a hammock.
The state of waiting–long, hard waiting–that’s the norm throughout nature and history.
Yet we’ve been shaped by a society that makes us feel like waiting is a problem, a waste of time, a curse. And if God is the one making us wait, what does that say about Him?
We are waiting for physical healing. Waiting for a child to come back to the Lord. Waiting in a difficult relationship. Waiting in loneliness. Waiting to be valued at work. Waiting to get a job. Waiting in grief. Waiting for our doubts and questions to be answered. Waiting for hope itself.
We may conclude that this excruciating waiting and trying to find hope is evidence that God is distant, uncaring or even actively opposed to us. But the painful truth is, waiting is normative–in the natural world–and our spiritual world.
We want relief from the pain, suffering, sorrow, crying, evil and brokenness–now! We don’t want to wait. But that relief has never been promised this side of heaven. This unbearable discontent that we feel deep in our souls has always meant to point us to Christ and a longing for His kingdom. We are not meant for this world to satisfy our deepest longings. Our hunger for deliverance will only be satisfied in His presence, in glory.
The book of Isaiah was written 700 years before its promise of the Messiah was fulfilled. 700 years of waiting! Yet it is full of the hope that no matter how bleak our present or future circumstances, God will ultimately deliver His people. Our calling has always been to wait with hope.
This doesn’t make me feel any better today. It brings no instant gratification. But it reminds me that waiting in hope isn’t a punishment. And that I’ve been programming myself to be a terrible wait-er. I need to practice the obedience of patiently waiting in hope.
“It will be said on that day, ‘Behold, this is our God; we have waited for Him, that He might save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for Him; let us be glad and rejoice in His salvation.’” (Isaiah 25:9).