Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you;
therefore he will rise up to show mercy to you.
For the Lord is a God of justice;
blessed are all those who wait for him.
Isaiah 30:18
I find myself struggling most often in faith when I wait.
Waiting for answers.
Waiting for change.
Waiting for action.
Waiting is the death of hope.
It doesn’t matter what kind of waiting you are doing, it’s just plain hard.
But as I was reading this section from Isaiah, I noticed something new.
Isaiah turns things around a little bit.
“The Lord waits to be gracious to you.”
This is not us waiting on God, but God waiting on us.
And that changes things doesn’t it?
Waiting isn’t about us simply sitting here, stagnant, apathetically waiting for God to act.
God is always there.
Always with us.
Waiting for moments where we notice and allow grace to enter in.
God isn’t waiting to act, God has already acted, and is just waiting for us to see it.
And goodness if that isn’t just lovely.
So hear this verse anew today.
Be reminded that you don’t have to wait for God – that grace is all around you right now – and God waits for you to live in it.
Old Testament Theologian Walter Brueggemann wrote this prayer about this very thing, called “The God who yearns and waits for us:”
We are strange conundrums of faithfulness and fickleness.
We cleave to you in all the ways that we are able.
We count on you and intend our lives to be lived for you,
And then we find ourselves among your people who are always seeking elsewhere and otherwise.
So we give thanks that you are the God who yearns and waits for us,
And that our connection to you is always from your side,
And that it is because of your goodness that neither life nor death, nor angels nor principalities, nor heights nor depths, nor anything in creation can separate us from you.
We give you thanks for your faithfulness, so much more durable than ours.
Amen.
“We give thanks that our connection to you is always from your side.”
Oh that’s just beautiful.
God is there.
Waiting on you.