I wait for the Lord. My soul waits, and in His word I hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning. (Verses 5-6)
The path of the righteous is level. You make level the way of the righteous. In the path of Your judgments, O Lord, we wait for You. Your name and remembrance are the desire of our soul. My soul yearns for You in the night. My spirit within me earnestly seeks You. Isaiah 26
What are you waiting for?
The little girl sat on the front porch. Her mother told her she'd be there by eleven o'clock in the morning to take her for the weekend. Emma's hair was neatly combed and her dress particularly chosen the night before so that her mother would think her beautiful. She was only seven years old. Young to be without a mom in the home. But her mother left her for a man who wasn't her daddy, and her new life was taken up with pleasing him. Emma's heart ached to be near her mom as her feet swung and she fidgeted with her hands while she waited nervously on the bench just outside the front door. She hadn't slept much the night before. Too excited. And...there was something else...a thing Emma didn't fully recognize at the time. An uneasy feeling. What if Mom doesn't show up? Waiting with all of her heart, watching like a watchman for dawn, hoping to see her Mom. Sometime in the early afternoon, Emma left her perch, went inside, took off her lovely dress, wiped the tears from her eyes and sucked it up. Again.
Joyce is turning forty. Her birthday party to announce it only days away. Those invited to celebrate the day with her were in various stages of their busy lives. Most, however, seemed happily occupied with a husband and a couple of kids. The thought that that part of life was passing her by always sat on the top of Joyce's stomach. Today she had to look at it. Forty and no man with whom to live her life. Has that passed me by? Doubts about herself. What is wrong with her that she's not married? Waiting, waiting like a watchman for the dawn, Joyce's soul nourished only by the hope she has that he is out there...her man. She must tell her soul that God is good, that He has a plan for her, because without Him there is no hope.
Cancer was the diagnosis three years ago when the young mother of three became plagued with headaches and double vision. Chemo and radiation made the beast which is this disease back off for a few months. But cancer returned with a vengeance. No treatment could cure it or fight it back this time. As the hospice workers tended to her pain, her children and husband hovering around her when their schedules didn't involve the busyness of living without her, the young mother waited. Soul weary but wanting to live. And in the night when the house was quiet, she bore her soul as she waited for her God to take her home. Hopeful like a watchman waiting for the dawn. She is with Him now. The waiting over.
Waiting is soul wrenching. Especially in this day of instant gratification. I have prayed for years for things that still haven't manifested. They are my "middle of the night" yearnings as my soul empties its desperate desire to see God do what only He can do. Much comes against our ability to wait on Him. Like Emma, many of us learned to distrust someone we should've been able to believe in. Time and again, failed and disappointed, only to be hopeful, failed and disappointed again. Hard to trust a God Who says He'll never leave us or forsake us when our experience tells us something else. Then there is the tape recording that plays in our heads when, like Joyce, our past experience hints to us that our future will look much the same. No real hope before us because there seems to be nothing on our horizon that will change things. And then there are times when hope collides with the certainty of death. If death is the end, all was hopeless from the very beginning anyway.
Today the waiting is over for Meriam Ibrahim! Jailed for her faith in Christ along with her infant children, she's been kept chained to the concrete floor upon which she gave birth a few short days ago. The world cried out against her imprisonment. God heard. One minute she's a prisoner, the next minute God speaks it over and it is! He has leveled out her path, opened wide the door to her personal freedom. And it makes the whole wide world rejoice!
Christ says He is our hope. David cried out in Psalm 62: For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is in Him. This world doesn't offer us much comfort. It can't. Its power over us takes us along in a drifting current from which we can't swim free. There is no hope except what we can conjure for ourselves. And, though we wait for a new dawn, this world always gives us a counterfeit. BUT God...takes us to the edge of the Red Sea where we weep and wail that we are destroyed if He doesn't come through. Then a stuttering eighty-year-old man touches the waters with a stick and they part, making a way where there is no way. Hannah cries out so loudly in church that the preacher thinks she's drunk, so soul-weary is she that she can't have a child. And God sees and hears. Declares her waiting over. The prophet Samuel forms in her barren body. For twenty-five years the already elderly Abraham and Sarah wait, impatiently and imperfectly, for the promise of a child. God waited until it was far too late and Sarah, at ninety, gave birth to the nation of Israel. A Messiah, promised a thousand years before, seemed past late in coming. The One described in Isaiah 53. The servant wounded for our transgressions. When He did come, it didn't look like the promised hope. Crucified and buried, the universe waited, soul pierced and anxious, until He rose up out of death, exited the tomb to live forever. Certainly worth waiting for. At just the perfect time, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. Galatians 4
God has a time for everything. If our hope is in Him, even death cannot keep us from an eternity of unspeakable joys. Even life can't rob us of the good things He's arranged for us in His perfect timing. It's never too late...never too early...for God. For with Him we always wait in hope...fervent hope, sometimes. Waiting and watching, needing so badly for Him to part our Red Seas or impregnate our dreams.
Keep us in hope, precious Father, keep us in hope. We wait and watch for you like the night watchman waits for the dawn. But what our souls really yearn for all along is You. Simply You. For You alone exceed all expectations.
The path of the righteous is level. You make level the way of the righteous. In the path of Your judgments, O Lord, we wait for You. Your name and remembrance are the desire of our soul. My soul yearns for You in the night. My spirit within me earnestly seeks You. Isaiah 26
What are you waiting for?
The little girl sat on the front porch. Her mother told her she'd be there by eleven o'clock in the morning to take her for the weekend. Emma's hair was neatly combed and her dress particularly chosen the night before so that her mother would think her beautiful. She was only seven years old. Young to be without a mom in the home. But her mother left her for a man who wasn't her daddy, and her new life was taken up with pleasing him. Emma's heart ached to be near her mom as her feet swung and she fidgeted with her hands while she waited nervously on the bench just outside the front door. She hadn't slept much the night before. Too excited. And...there was something else...a thing Emma didn't fully recognize at the time. An uneasy feeling. What if Mom doesn't show up? Waiting with all of her heart, watching like a watchman for dawn, hoping to see her Mom. Sometime in the early afternoon, Emma left her perch, went inside, took off her lovely dress, wiped the tears from her eyes and sucked it up. Again.
Joyce is turning forty. Her birthday party to announce it only days away. Those invited to celebrate the day with her were in various stages of their busy lives. Most, however, seemed happily occupied with a husband and a couple of kids. The thought that that part of life was passing her by always sat on the top of Joyce's stomach. Today she had to look at it. Forty and no man with whom to live her life. Has that passed me by? Doubts about herself. What is wrong with her that she's not married? Waiting, waiting like a watchman for the dawn, Joyce's soul nourished only by the hope she has that he is out there...her man. She must tell her soul that God is good, that He has a plan for her, because without Him there is no hope.
Cancer was the diagnosis three years ago when the young mother of three became plagued with headaches and double vision. Chemo and radiation made the beast which is this disease back off for a few months. But cancer returned with a vengeance. No treatment could cure it or fight it back this time. As the hospice workers tended to her pain, her children and husband hovering around her when their schedules didn't involve the busyness of living without her, the young mother waited. Soul weary but wanting to live. And in the night when the house was quiet, she bore her soul as she waited for her God to take her home. Hopeful like a watchman waiting for the dawn. She is with Him now. The waiting over.
Waiting is soul wrenching. Especially in this day of instant gratification. I have prayed for years for things that still haven't manifested. They are my "middle of the night" yearnings as my soul empties its desperate desire to see God do what only He can do. Much comes against our ability to wait on Him. Like Emma, many of us learned to distrust someone we should've been able to believe in. Time and again, failed and disappointed, only to be hopeful, failed and disappointed again. Hard to trust a God Who says He'll never leave us or forsake us when our experience tells us something else. Then there is the tape recording that plays in our heads when, like Joyce, our past experience hints to us that our future will look much the same. No real hope before us because there seems to be nothing on our horizon that will change things. And then there are times when hope collides with the certainty of death. If death is the end, all was hopeless from the very beginning anyway.
Today the waiting is over for Meriam Ibrahim! Jailed for her faith in Christ along with her infant children, she's been kept chained to the concrete floor upon which she gave birth a few short days ago. The world cried out against her imprisonment. God heard. One minute she's a prisoner, the next minute God speaks it over and it is! He has leveled out her path, opened wide the door to her personal freedom. And it makes the whole wide world rejoice!
Christ says He is our hope. David cried out in Psalm 62: For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is in Him. This world doesn't offer us much comfort. It can't. Its power over us takes us along in a drifting current from which we can't swim free. There is no hope except what we can conjure for ourselves. And, though we wait for a new dawn, this world always gives us a counterfeit. BUT God...takes us to the edge of the Red Sea where we weep and wail that we are destroyed if He doesn't come through. Then a stuttering eighty-year-old man touches the waters with a stick and they part, making a way where there is no way. Hannah cries out so loudly in church that the preacher thinks she's drunk, so soul-weary is she that she can't have a child. And God sees and hears. Declares her waiting over. The prophet Samuel forms in her barren body. For twenty-five years the already elderly Abraham and Sarah wait, impatiently and imperfectly, for the promise of a child. God waited until it was far too late and Sarah, at ninety, gave birth to the nation of Israel. A Messiah, promised a thousand years before, seemed past late in coming. The One described in Isaiah 53. The servant wounded for our transgressions. When He did come, it didn't look like the promised hope. Crucified and buried, the universe waited, soul pierced and anxious, until He rose up out of death, exited the tomb to live forever. Certainly worth waiting for. At just the perfect time, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. Galatians 4
God has a time for everything. If our hope is in Him, even death cannot keep us from an eternity of unspeakable joys. Even life can't rob us of the good things He's arranged for us in His perfect timing. It's never too late...never too early...for God. For with Him we always wait in hope...fervent hope, sometimes. Waiting and watching, needing so badly for Him to part our Red Seas or impregnate our dreams.
Keep us in hope, precious Father, keep us in hope. We wait and watch for you like the night watchman waits for the dawn. But what our souls really yearn for all along is You. Simply You. For You alone exceed all expectations.
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