Real Hope: Patience in the WaitingSample

Waiting Isn't Just Sitting There

Waiting. We wait all week for the weekend, all year for holidays, and all our lives for happiness. Waiting can feel futile, can’t it?

Sure, laziness and avoidance can masquerade as waiting, but this isn’t the waiting that the Psalmist is talking about here. This kind of waiting is active. It’s more searching than sitting. 

There is a distinction between searching and solving, however.

Here, the watchmen guarding the walls are eagerly anticipating the rising of the morning sun, revealing what lies in the darkened valleys and gullies outside the city. Perhaps the first glimpses of the new day mean they can now rest. As the temperature drops just before dawn, they start to relax just a little, casting their minds forward to the deep sleep that will follow their all-night vigil.

No matter how hard they try, however, they cannot make the sun rise any earlier. But that doesn’t mean the wait is futile. They continue to march around the wall; they continue to peer into the darkness. Their task remains protecting their city, not to mourn their incapacity to make the sun rise earlier, or rage against the sun’s tardiness in winter, or doubt the existence of the sun in long winter nights. 

They wait for the sun expectantly and optimistically.   

Their hearts sing as a pale rim of dawn appears on the horizon.

Waiting is hard. The nights are long sometimes. Today, if the night seems long, remember David’s watchmen. Serve not solve. 

Written by DWAYNE JEFFRIES