September 12
September 12
At the center of the life of faith is the willingness to wait on the one who accomplishes his will in his time and in his way.
I’m sure you’re like me: you don’t enjoy waiting. I don’t feel blessed when I am waiting in a long grocery line. I don’t like it when a highway turns into a parking lot. I don’t appreciate that the doctor made an appointment with me for a certain time, but the time has come and gone and I am left waiting. I confess that my struggle with waiting is not just a matter of horizontal situations and relationships. No, my impatience is a spiritual problem. Embedded in my struggle to wait is a frustration with the fact that I am not sovereign, that I do not control all people and situations. I am frustrated with my lack of control, when I should want to celebrate the unshakable and eternal control of the one who sits on the throne of the universe.
I was complaining in traffic many years ago, and my eleven-year-old son asked whether he could say something. I later wished I had said no. But I said, “Sure, you can talk,” and he said, “Dad, maybe it’s a heart problem and not a traffic problem.” It was humbling to have to admit that he was exactly right. He wasn’t intending to be disrespectful; he was just repeating to me things I had taught him. Woven into God’s call for us to live by faith is a call to patience. Our willingness to wait on God means we really do believe that he exists, that he really is wise, that he is good all of the time and in every way, and that he will ultimately do for us, in us, and around us everything he has promised.
It makes sense then that the book of Daniel, which presents to us God’s rule over the history of every people group and every governmental entity, would end with a call to be patient: “Blessed is he who waits and arrives at the 1,335 days. But go your way till the end. And you shall rest and shall stand in your allotted place at the end of the days” (Dan. 12:12–13). When understood in the context of the numerology of Daniel 12, the number 1,335 connotes that the person waiting has been willing to wait longer than expected. He is willing to continue to do what God has called him to do, even though God hasn’t acted in the time he expected. The promise in the passage is that, if we are willing to wait, then our promised place and rest will come when the end comes.
Today, God calls us to wait. There are things for which we have longed and prayed that have not yet come. There are promises we have embraced that have not yet been fulfilled. The life of faith is about standing at the intersection of brokenness and longing, not questioning God’s presence, power, or goodness, but continuing to trust and obey, assured that he still rules and is marching his world toward the fullness of all he has promised.
Do you struggle to wait? God meets you with empowering grace.