In the famous play Waiting for Godot, two characters spend the entire play waiting for someone who never arrives. Amazingly, the playwright made a lot of money out of a play in which nothing really happens.
Waiting is one of the hardest things we do. Most of us have been spending far more time than we wanted to waiting in line to get into stores whose capacity has been limited. Our daughter Sarah has been waiting for travel restrictions to ease so that she can be reunited with her fiancé Jacob, who lives in the UK, and somehow have a wedding ceremony with at least some family members present. Several of our friends have been waiting for cancer treatment. All of us have been waiting for the public health emergency to pass.
There’s a lot of waiting in the Bible. Abraham waited years for a son. Moses waited half a lifetime and never made it across the Jordan. David waited years in the wilderness being chased by Saul. Elijah waited 42 months in the desert being fed by ravens. Paul waited nine years in Tarsus until Barnabas came for him. One of the favourite cries of the psalmist was, “How long, O Lord?” And that cry reappears in the last book of the Bible. There’s waiting all the way from Genesis to Revelation.
There’s two reasons why God makes us wait. First, contrary to what we might think, his plans for the universe are not centred completely on us. He is weaving our lives into the great tapestry of his purposes. That means he has things to do with other people as well. There are many pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that have to be brought together for his plan to be fulfilled. And while he does that, we wait.
Second, waiting draws us into a deeper dependence. That’s hard, and sometimes it causes us to complain, just like the psalmist did. And that’s OK, because God knows what’s going in our heart and would rather we talk honestly to him about it. At those times we have to trust that the internal work of deeper dependence is in the end better for us than having our prayers answered when we wanted them to be.
To move forward without him means missing out on the very best of what he has for us. What a tragedy if we spent much time waiting and then, just as he was about to answer, we abandoned our place of trust and blew it.
When we’re waiting, a great strategy is to look back at other times when we waited faithfully and God came through. And we were glad he didn’t give us the immediate answers we wanted. What in the end he did for us was far better.
Contrary to what Samuel Beckett’s play suggests, a lot does happen while we wait. And God, unlike Godot, always shows up.
“They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint” (Isa. 40:31).
CONSIDER PARTNERING WITH DAVID & ELAINE CAMPBELL IN HELPING TO SUSTAIN THEIR ACTIVE MINISTRY.
AWAKENING MINISTRIES // FOUNDATION of FAITH Project
Foundation of Faith Project is strengthening generations in faith and bringing beautiful changes to the communities around them. Through teaching, mentoring and coaching, many are finding out who they are and who they are destined to be. They are bringing more to their world. David Campbell is the key leader in this initiative and you can support him financially directly through Awakening Ministries.
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