A Pepper Grinder Post

The Lost Art of Waiting

I am not an especially patient person. I get annoyed when I choose the slow line at the grocery store. I tap my foot and fidget while I wait for slow web pages to load. I don’t like to be kept waiting.

While I’m sure this has something to do with my personality, I also think that this trait is common in our culture and becoming more pervasive all the time. We have absorbed the message that we should be able to get what we want, as soon as we want it. Do we want to check our email or text a friend or find the nearest restaurant that sells barbecued wings? No need to wait! Just whip out the phone and do it. If we want a book or a song or a movie, we don’t need to wait until it ships to us or we can get to a store, we can stream it right now, as soon as we make the instant electronic payment. In our personal lives and in our government, we have rejected the idea that just because we don’t have the cash for something right now, we have to wait for it.

Lest you mistake me for a Luddite, I don’t think all of this is bad. Just because our culture and technology is different from the rest of recorded history doesn’t make it automatically wrong. On the other hand, I’m afraid that we are turning into people who don’t know how to wait. Not only does this make us tend to be rude and self-centered, it is disastrous for our relationship with God. Listen to what Psalm 130 says (my translation):

A song of ascents:

From the depths I cry to you, Yahweh.
Listen to my voice, my Lord;
May your ears hear the sound of my cry for help.

Lord, if you kept a record of guilt,
who could stand?
Because there is forgiveness with you,
you are revered.

I wait for Yahweh, my soul waits;
I wait for his word.
I wait for my Lord, more than watchmen for the morning;
more than watchmen for the morning.

Wait for Yahweh, O Israel;
because Yahweh has great kindness and redemption.
He will ransom Israel from all her guilt.

The waiting that the psalmist mentions is very different from the impatient, toe-tapping variety with which we are so familiar. In our waiting, we are the masters. We go into a restaurant, and a girl comes up to our table and says, “Hi, I’m Brittany, and I’ll be your server today.” She and the restaurant are serving us, and we are being served. Or, when you go online and are waiting for some web page to load, do you know what the computers are called that are chugging away to pop up your friend’s Facebook page, along with the 235 photographs you wish he hadn’t just posted? You guessed it: they are called servers. In both cases, we are the masters who are being served, and we often wish that the service were a little quicker.

In this psalm, the psalmist is waiting, but he is not waiting to be served. He is waiting for the word of his Lord and Master. He may be waiting for a word of forgiveness or comfort or command, but it is clear that he is not the one in charge. It is also striking that there is no mention of a Plan B. Plan A is to wait for God to speak. If the psalmist doesn’t hear God, he will keep waiting. He has put all his eggs in one basket. There is only one thing he wants, and he is willing to wait until he gets it.

I had a friend growing up who once told me that he “tried Jesus but it didn’t work.” To this day, I am not sure what he meant, but I strongly suspect that he prayed something like the sinner’s prayer and then failed to feel the rush of emotion that he had heard others describe having experienced when they came to Christ. He had clicked on the link, but the page hadn’t loaded. My friend was trying out Jesus to see if he would work, but the psalmist knows that God is real and is waiting to hear what God will say to him.

What is the psalmist’s attitude while waiting? Is he bored and indifferent? Is he impatient? The psalm says that he waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning.

Being a watchman was a crucial function in Old Testament times. Read the Old Testament historical books, and you will get a picture of a world where might made right. It was normal and expected for a nation or tribe to attack and try to conquer other groups. This was so normal that wars didn’t even need to be justified by saying that the other nation had done some terrible wrong. War was such an expected activity that there was even a season set aside for it, like baseball. “In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war,” is how 2 Samuel 11:1 starts in the NIV.

Because of the prevalence of war, you had to have a watchman who could warn the city of an impending attack. This was especially important at night, when no one but the watchman would be on the lookout. I would think that being a watchman would often be a thankless job. It was imperative that you be awake and alert, in spite of the fact that most nights, nothing would happen. Like other desert or semi-arid areas, the part of Israel where David lived gets quite cold at night, even if it was hot during the day.

What would that tired, shivering watchman be thinking about as the night wore on? He would be picturing that moment when the eastern sky goes from black to dark gray, which tells him that morning is at last coming. He longs for that moment.

The psalmist says that he longs for Yahweh (the personal name God allowed the Israelites to call him) more than that. I think that I seldom let myself get to that point of yearning. Sure, I would like to be close to God; I would like to hear from him. But if it doesn’t seem to be happening, my natural tendency is to want to turn on some music or a podcast or watch a movie or read a book. In other words, if God doesn’t seem to be giving me what I want, I often turn to something else. This is partly fallen human nature and partly the curse of living in an entertainment-saturated culture.

I am not saying that when we want to hear from God, we have to simply drop everything and become immobile until he answers or helps us. I believe that there were people in the Bible who waited for years for God to answer them or come to their aid. They didn’t just veg out during that time; they went on with life. What I think we need to avoid is trying to fill the emptiness that we know only God can fill with something else. We need not to try to stop the yearning. Even as we go about our daily life, there should be a part of us that is waiting and longing for a more intimate relationship with God, and that KNOWS it’s waiting and longing.

While we are waiting, we need to keep ourselves in a state where we are ready to hear and obey God. This makes me think of one of Jesus’s parables.

"Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his master has set over his household, to give them their food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions. But if that wicked servant says to himself, 'My master is delayed,' and begins to beat his fellow servants and eats and drinks with drunkards, the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know and will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matthew 24:45-51, NIV)

I imagine that most of us have some unanswered questions for God. On the other hand, I believe we all know of things that we should be doing and things that we should not be doing. Even if we never feel that God has communicated with us directly (and I think we SHOULD long for direct communication with God), the Bible certainly clues us in to the way we should live. It doesn’t tell us what job to work at, but it does tell us how we are to work at the job we have. While we wait and yearn, we should be doing the things we know God wants us to do.

There is one final thing I would like to say. While that watchman is waiting for the morning, it may seem like the night will never end, but there has never been a night that did not come to an end. If we have chosen to wait and yearn for Yahweh, we WILL be satisfied. We will not be 100% satisfied until we are united with him at the end of our lives, but it WILL happen.

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” (Matthew 5:6, NIV, emphasis mine)

Wait for it.

- Pepper
Posted 2019-08-17

*Image Credits: Traffic jam by Sanja Gjenero, dogs waiting by Graeme Rainsbury.