Those Who Wait (Friday Devotional)

 

Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.

- Psalm 27:14

On Monday morning, I reported to the Frank Crowley Courts Building in Dallas for a long-delayed rite of passage into American adulthood: jury duty. I happened to post on Facebook about it that morning, and in the comments, several people thanked me for my service, for fulfilling my civic duty. Yet despite those grandiose terms, all I really wound up doing was wait, wait, wait. I waited in Dallas traffic to get where I was going. I waited in the security line outside the courthouse. And for two and a half hours, I waited in the central jury room, only to be dismissed without being called upon. My “service to democracy,” at least this time around, was to spend 4 hours of my morning waiting.

Part of the reason we sincerely refer to the inconveniences of jury duty—not to mention voting, volunteering, and more—as acts of sacrificial service is because of how much we despise waiting. We hate waiting at the DMV, we hate waiting at the doctor’s office, we hate waiting at the grocery store. Indeed, some people find even amusement parks—places literally designed for fun—to be joyless because of all the waiting they require. In a society where we can buy any product, answer any question, and contact any friend with the click of a button, few things seem as frustrating and unnecessary as being forced to wait.

How instructive and humbling then to be reminded in Scripture that sometimes—many times—we are required to wait for God. For all the areas of life where we are in control, all the places where we can bend things to our will and get what we want, we don’t get to determine God’s timing. We simply seek him humbly, pray to him earnestly—and wait.

Waiting for the Lord serves as a gentle reminder that it is God who is sovereign, not us. What we have is not ours, it’s simply what we’ve been entrusted with—God is the one who holds the world in his hands, not us. Waiting for the Lord, when done with patience instead of resentment, is an act of humility and faith.

Waiting, whether for an answer to prayer or for your name to be called in a jury room, is probably never going to be fun. But that doesn’t mean it’s useless—if you’ll approach it with a humble perspective, to wait is to learn.