The purpose of waiting

Originally posted by [email protected]

“And I will wait on Thy name” Psalm 52:9c

Waiting is a life-long lesson. We learn to wait when we’re children. We conquer that kind of waiting (like for Christmas, our birthdays, summer vacation). Then, as adults we realize we have to wait for a lot of things especially in regard to our faith and prayer requests.

Looking up “wait on” in the Hebrew, I found something very thought provoking. This is part of it:
wait for, look for, to hope for . . . The root meaning is that of twisting or winding a strand of cord or rope, but it is uncertain how the root meaning relates to the idea of hope. . . the word also means to be gathered and refers to the gathering of waters (Ge 1:9) and of people (jer 3:17).”

So, I decided to take this challenge this morning, to think of possibilities of what this root meaning as to do with hoping, and waiting on God. When we learn to wait well we are building up our spiritual muscles. It is a way of God preparing us for what is next in our lives. It is very necessary to learn to wait well. But in this waiting, something is going on within our souls, our minds, etc. I think we are getting stronger. It is a twisting of a rope — the twisting of strands together makes a rope stronger and able to do so much more. The twisting of strands together is what makes it a rope. Without that twisting it is just a bunch of strands. And without the twisting there is no strength.

So too with us. Without the waiting and learning to wait well with expectation we don’t get strong spiritually. It is vital to our spiritual growth, to us learning to believe no matter what, to be who God created us to be. If we don’t do this we will always be sitting on the fence with our faith even if we aren’t in our words. Inwardly we will be in chaos. We must learn to use our eyes of faith, see life with them.