2. It is Good to Wait on the Lord

“It is good to wait on the Lord,” says Lamentations 3:26. This became my daily pep talk and my conclusion of the matter whenever anyone asked me what I was doing next. It is likely if you knew me or hung out with me in 2019, you heard me say this. “It is good to wait on the Lord.” I repeated it to myself and others regularly, since the more I talked about my place of uncertainty, the more I learned that most everybody found themselves in that same place.

So much shaping happens in the waiting, in the wilderness. I think about David in the years between the anointing and the appointing, on the run in the wilderness. I think about the Israelites wandering in the wilderness forty years, Moses in the desert before his burning bush experience, and Jesus in the wilderness of temptation. I think about how the prophets and poets write about the wilderness as a place where God draws his people out to romance them and draw them closer to himself. 

None of that wandering was wasted. Time in the wilderness was never simply to punish or to kill time, but rather to form those people into who they were becoming. God never abandoned his people in the wilderness, rather he showed up powerfully to remind them who he is and prepare them for the lives he called them to.

We in the west are addicted to forward motion and increasing momentum. Waiting is the antithesis. Again, the Jesus way is different than the western way. Instead of rush, rest. Instead of speed, sabbath. Instead of streamlining, stillness. Instead of work, wait. 

It is not an idle twiddling of the thumbs while time passes. Waiting on the Lord is not passive but active. God works miracles in shaping us while we wait on him.

The best explanation I have heard about waiting on the Lord comes from the Hebrew word qavah, which is often translated as “wait.” It also means “to tie together by twisting” or “to entwine” or “to wrap tightly.” In other words, waiting on the Lord is wrapping our hearts into him and his purpose. 

The overwhelming word of the Lord as I sought his direction was “wait.” Indeed, it is good to wait on the Lord. Don’t skip it, don’t rush it, don’t waste it. Sit in in. Linger in it. God is in it. God’s voice is often not in the wind or the fire or the earthquake, but in the gentle whisper.