Psalm 27:14
Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord .
How good are you at waiting? We've certainly had lots of
practice lately. Waiting for lockdown to be over. Waiting in queues. Perhaps you're waiting for bad news ... illness of a loved one, loss of a job. Or maybe you get most frustrated by the shorter, everyday waits .... waiting for a child to go to sleep, waiting for the wi-fi to reconnect. Most of all, as Christians,
we are waiting for the day when Jesus will come back and take us to be with him in glory.
But how are we waiting? Perhaps we wait with fear, dwelling
on the worst case scenario, minds filled with all the things that could go wrong. Or perhaps we're confident that the future will be better than the present. We're just waiting for the baby to
be older, waiting for the new job, the new house, the new country, even, that will make everything alright. Waiting, discontentedly, for circumstances to change.
David knew what it was like to wait, too. Lots of this Psalm is in the future tense. 'When the wicked advance against me ... I will not fear' (v2-3). 'In the day of trouble he will keep me safe' (v5).
He isn't waiting primarily for things to get worse, or better. He is waiting for the Lord. It's not that God's not there in the
present, and he's waiting for God to turn up and get involved. His relationship with God is present tense - God IS his light, salvation and stronghold right now.
Rather, I think, he's waiting to see what God will do next.
He knows God has plans that aren't finished yet. God will always be at work, so he will spend his whole life looking to see what God is doing. Not waiting passively, sitting back and doing nothing. But waiting actively, trusting God, directing all his attention back to God every time it wanders, seeking him, singing to him, following him. All the active verbs we've seen throughout this Psalm.
Will we learn to wait like that? Not fearfully, or discontentedly, waiting for things to be different. But waiting with strengthened hearts because we KNOW that God is with us now and will be with us throughout all our tomorrows. Let's pray that God would teach us to wait like that.
