Waiting on the Lord

A couple of years ago, I was reading through a psalm every day, and I had never given much thought to what it means to wait on the Lord, but I was struck by how many times the psalmist vows to wait on the Lord and encourages the reader to also wait on the Lord. The words created images in my mind of passivity, someone waiting to be rescued. This isn’t entirely wrong I suppose, but it’s incomplete. The more I studied, the more I realized that waiting on the Lord is not passive like waiting for the bus. It’s an active waiting. It’s an act of faith where we trust in God’s faithfulness, love, justice, mercy, grace, etc, even though not everything has been tidied up like it will be at the end of time. What this means is that we are to live in a way that shows that we believe in the justice of God and His promises for His Children even though we are mistreated and hungry today. Waiting on the Lord involves remembering the faithfulness of God in our past and present and living in a way that believes in His faithfulness for tomorrow. Waiting on the Lord is active believing that God has given us all we need for today by not turning to other gods for fulfillment, or whatever your spiritual drug of choice may be. Waiting on the Lord is doing what is right and holy even if doing what is right and holy feels like it is starving our bodies or souls. If we truly believe that God is going to come through either in this life or the next for His children and Christ for His bride, then we would gladly starve today for God’s faithful promises of tomorrow. What this means is that if we believed that God has truly given us all we need for life today, then we would wait on Him by not sinning because sin shows our lack of trust in God’s promises of provision. It shows that we believe there is something else that we need right here and right now other than what He has provided.*

*I hope to unpack this a little more in the future.