Lectionary readings for today:
Morning: Ps. 22; 148
Evening: Ps. 105; 130
I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning,
more than those who watch for the morning.
-from Psalm 130
I am not very good at waiting. Whether it is in a long line at the grocery store or in traffic or on the phone for a customer service representative (“You are the 9th caller. Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line”) – I find that I have little patience. It is boring. There are so many other things I could be doing with my time.
This work by Jacques Nyemb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
But these seem different than the kind of waiting the psalmist is talking about here.
Psalm 130 begins with “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.”
This is nothing like waiting in line or on the phone. This is waiting for deliverance from God. This is crying out to God who is our strength and our hope. It is an active, urgent, holy kind of waiting – but still an uncomfortable one.
“My soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning.”
Have you ever watched for the morning? I think of times when I have been anxious about something, and my usually restful sleep is plagued with unsettled dreams, insomnia and stress. It is in these moments that I long for the morning to come – when I can face everything more clearly, allow the light of day to offer me better perspective. In the uncertainty of night, we wait for the dawn of a new day to break in and offer us relief. And it is with that kind of longing for the morning that we wait for God to renew us.
This season of Lent gives us the gift of uncomfortable and hope-filled waiting. We seek to make some space in the busy-ness of our lives for God. And when we have cleared out some of the clutter, we must resist our urge to fill it with the next thing that comes along. We must sit with those empty spaces, waiting for God to fill us, offering us the wholeness and healing we long to find.
God who knows my impatience, help me to create some space for you. And grant me the ability to wait for you with hopeful expectation, so that I might be made new and equipped to serve others.
——
Laura Becker
Northminster Presbyterian Church 