Listen:
Isaiah 40:3-7, 9-11
A voice is crying out: “Clear the Lord’s way in the desert! Make a level highway in the wilderness for our God!
Every valley will be raised up, and every mountain and hill will be flattened. Uneven ground will become level, and rough terrain a valley plain.
The Lord’s glory will appear, and all humanity will see it together; the Lord’s mouth has commanded it.”
Go up on a high mountain, messenger Zion! Raise your voice and shout, messenger Jerusalem! Raise it; don’t be afraid; say to the cities of Judah, “Here is your God!”
Here is the Lord God, coming with strength, with a triumphant arm, bringing his reward with him and his payment before him.
Like a shepherd, God will tend the flock; he will gather lambs in his arms and lift them onto his lap. He will gently guide the nursing ewes.
Consider:
As the song goes, the waiting is the hardest part. Whether it’s waiting for the good news of new life (and the months of anticipation which come along with it) or waiting for the diagnosis which means obstacles to come, it’s the waiting which is the hardest part. The long drive to the office. The time sitting in hard chairs, which promises comfort but doesn’t provide it. The watching for tell-tale signs on the doctor’s face so you can just, for the love of God, have an answer already! We can handle whatever answer is to come, whatever steps we have to take, but the waiting, the wondering, that is agonizing and paralyzing.
Judging by the honking cars behind me at a stop light, the last thing we want to do is wait.
Isaiah promised the exiles and outcasts of Israel a new, more hopeful future. This promise told of a time when God’s would be fully in control, the path easy, the way straight, and all creation at peace. For those trying to make the best of life in Babylon, this promise was refreshing and life-giving.
But then, Isaiah drops the bad news. This time you have been looking towards? This future which lies ahead of you? You can’t have it. Not yet. This time will come in the lives of your children or your children’s children. Maybe not even until many generations have come and passed away. Here is the future you want - and the God who fulfills all promises has told you it will come - but you can’t have it. Not yet.
Not yet.
And so we wait. Maybe the task for us in waiting is to acknowledge that it just stinks. It’s the worst. Maybe today we just acknowledge that we don’t like this waiting thing very much. We don’t want to be patient. We don’t want to live with this nervous ball in the pit of our stomachs. We want the future we were promised, and we want it now.
But today, we wait. And maybe, just for today, we are honest about how little we want to wait.
Respond:
Set a timer for five minutes. During this time, actively engage in a single, small, physical task you can complete right now, like cleaning one kitchen counter, folding a single sweater, or organizing one drawer. The goal is to create a small, tangible win to counteract the paralyzed feeling of waiting. When the timer goes off, stop and return to the waiting, having anchored yourself in immediate, manageable reality.
Pray:
God of Time, we come to You confessing the agony of the waiting. It is harder than the answer itself. We hate the nervous knot in our stomachs, the paralyzing uncertainty, and the persistent “Not Yet” denying us our promised future.
Forgive our impatience; we do not want to be patient.
Grant us the grace to simply be honest today. Let us acknowledge how much this waiting stinks. And in that honesty, anchor us. Help us take the next single step, trusting that even in this unwelcome pause, You hold the straight path. Sustain us, Lord, as we wait.
Amen.
