So much of life is waiting. Waiting in line, waiting for an appointment, waiting for the right partner or for a child, waiting for that same child to finally leave home . . . waiting your turn, waiting for your ship to come in, waiting for the Lord to fulfill His promises, to get down here right now and fix everything.

I am not a patient waiter. Some of us are wired to look to the past and some to lean into the future. I’m a future-leaner. I have to work hard to relax my mind and stay in the moment, to not miss the present because my head is in the future. I hate to wait.

But I love the Lord. And I’m willing to wait upon the Lord, to trust His timing over my own sense of urgency. Almost a decade ago, the Lord made me a significant personal promise, one of those “impossible” ones, like Sarah’s old-age pregnancy or Mary’s virgin conception. I call it the Big Revelation. I still can’t see any way for it to be fulfilled. And I was given no hint about the divine timetable. So I simply wait. Like Sarah and Abraham, who were already past childbearing age when they were promised a son. Fifteen years passed, and still no child. All they got then was a reassurance from the Lord that the promise was still valid. Ten more years passed before Sarah got pregnant and Isaac finally arrived. That’s 25 years of waiting on the Lord to fulfill a promise that was laughable even when it was made.

Sue Monk Kidd, in her marvelous book, When the Heart Waits, writes of “active” waiting as she waded and waited through a spiritual crisis. Waiting isn’t just sitting around . . . waiting. It’s a living faith, an active hope. It’s waiting on the Lord, like a waiter or waitress, commonly called a server. While we wait upon the Lord, we wait on the Lord. We believe, we trust, we serve, we wait.

I don’t imagine that Sarah waited in perfect patience for a quickening in her womb every day of those 25 years. She began her wait by laughing in disbelief. Doubt and disbelief, especially as we wait for “impossible” promises,  are part of the process and it does no good to condemn ourselves for it. Still, I wonder if the Lord gives us these waiting periods for our own good, to give us the benefit of time to grow our faith and our trust, until no matter what the evidence — or lack thereof — we believe. We wait upon the Lord, knowing His promises are sure.

What are you waiting for? How do you wait upon the Lord? Has the Lord ever rewarded your patient waiting with a promise fulfilled?