Waiting.
Waiting is not something humans tend to enjoy. Whether you’re 9 years old, waiting for the days to pass until you get to go to the amusement park, or you’re 26 years old waiting for the right person to come along to commit your life to, or you’re 55 years old waiting for lab results to see how serious the treatment will be, or you’re 83 years old waiting for a spouse to cross the threshold from your home to His. Waiting is just. plain. hard.
I’m in a place of waiting right now. (Come to think of it, I’ve been in a place of waiting for about the last 2 years. Maybe waiting never ends, it just evolves…) But currently, it’s a place of waiting in ministry. The Lord is doing some really profound things in Women of Hope, and most of them are out in the future – near or far. There is staff turnover, a new identity and focus to be revealed June 1st (stay tuned!), shifts in how we do what we do – to name just a few – and most of the details for these shifts are not yet revealed. And none of these changes are without profound effect on my own life and my family.
But at the beginning of this year, the Lord gave us a theme for the year – Wait in Hope. Obviously He was keenly aware of how deeply we would need to ground ourselves in that faith-filled action. Action. See, waiting – on the surface – appears to be passive. It’s not. Not if we do it Biblically. Waiting is active. Particularly waiting in hope. This type of waiting is the stuff of rootedness, of digging deep into Truth, of repeating to ourselves day-after-long-and-wearying-day that He is our anchor. It requires determined intentionality. Waiting in hope will not just “happen” to us in a place of dark uncertainty. No, we must take active steps to walk into that darkness knowing that the Light is within us and we have nothing to fear.
We must remain confident of this: that regardless of the darkness or the questions or the uncertainty or the change – we WILL SEE the goodness of the Lord. Because He IS good, and that doesn’t change in times of uncertainty or questions or seismic shifts. And the difference between waiting in hope, and the way we generally think of waiting, is that He is IN the waiting. This is not like a “waiting room” at the doctor, where you just sit, mindlessly passing time until the doctor decides to see you. He is there in the waiting. He waits with you – and He is NEVER passive. He sits with you in the place that seems dark, and He is already way out ahead of you in the place where all will be revealed. Darkness is light to Him.
Where are you waiting? How can you wait more actively, anchoring your soul in hope?
Some resources for your waiting:
Here’s a Spotify playlist I put together this year for our theme of Waiting in Hope. Most are renditions of Psalm 130:5-6 from all different genres. Don’t judge quickly! You might find here something you would have never stumbled across on your own! 🙂
A Playlist for Waiting
If you’re in a place of waiting, I encourage you to spend some time meditating on Psalm 130. Get on the YouVersion app or Biblegateway and read it in different versions.