Psalm 119:147 I rise before the dawning of the morning, And cry for help; I hope in Your word. In Hebrew this verse actually reads something like: I anticipate (go before) the twilight and cry out for help. I await Your word. A couple of thoughts on this: To me, twilight is a peaceful time. In the morning it heralds the coming of daylight. In the evening, the world prepares to rest. Today I am anticipating the twilight. Circumstances have made life rocky and uncertain. I know God is faithful, and I cry out for His help – to smooth the way, to speed the process, and to give me peace as I wait. I await (anticipate) daylight, when things are settled and sorted and I can see a little bit. I anticipate evening when I can rest from the running around like crazy. I await Your word. When God speaks, things happen. His word is action. He spoke and the world became. He speaks and what He says is done. His word is law. He is never wrong (wrong is different from changing His mind). Therefore, I wait (today, anxiously) for God to speak. I know that what He speaks will be. His word may be “Peace, child, and wait with me.” Or it may be, “Remember my faithfulness!” Or maybe His word will be something I can’t perceive, but the angels know and obey Him. I don’t know. I don’t have to know. My job is to remember. And to wait. So I wait for the knots to untangle and for the unhill climb to level off a bit. And I remember that YHWH has always been faithful in the past. Perhaps He will wait until the 9th hour, when everything is impossible, to move in miraculous ways. Then He will remind me, “I am God! Nothing is impossible for me!”
Psalm 5:3 Listen to my voice in the morning, LORD. Each morning I bring my requests to you and wait expectantly. I have found that the days when I spend time with my Abba in the morning, my day seems a little less tense (usually). I’ve also found that the hardest part about requesting something is the waiting. I love how David is waiting “expectantly” for God’s answer. I wonder if he was waiting for a verbal answer or if he was waiting for a more physical answer. My husband and I recently took a class to help us communicate better with our son who has autism. One of the key things they teach parents is to wait. It’s really hard to wait. And there are times when I think I’m waiting, but I’m not. This is also a skill they try to teach teachers – ask a question and then wait. Count to 10. It always seems longer than it is. Maybe it’s the same with waiting for an answer. In the grand scheme of things, it’s definitely shorter than we think it is. But it’s really hard to wait without trying to say the answer or reiterate the question. Waiting is definitely hard to do.
Psalm 24:11 Wait patiently for the LORD. Be brave and courageous. Yes, wait patiently for the LORD. It is so hard to wait patiently. Think about little kids and Christmas. They may not even know what it is, but they can sense the excitement and it keeps them up at night in anticipation. Or what about when you see something you really want. For example, every night we do the same routine with my two boys. They get dinner, a bath, a bottle, and then we read and they go to bed. And every night, when Gavin sees his bottle being warmed up in the microwave he starts crying because he wants it now. It’s almost comical because there’s never been a time when we haven’t given him the bottle, and he doesn’t like it if it’s cold. So he has to wait a whole 28 seconds before it’s ready, and you’d think he’d never get that thing fast enough! Even as adults we have a hard time waiting patiently. At least, I know I do. I don’t like to wait in lines, and I always seem to pick the slowest one. I have a hard time waiting when I see something I really want to buy. Sometimes I have a hard time waiting until the boys are in bed so that I can make dinner and sit down and eat (yes, this is weird, and hopefully it’ll change so that we can all eat together sometime). I think that story about Gavin made me realize a little of why we have to wait on God sometimes. He hates his bottle cold, but waiting for it to get warmed up is hard. I wonder how often God makes us wait because the reward will be better in the end. He’s just heating it up. Twenty-eight seconds seems like an eternity to a two-year-old, and waiting patiently on God’s timing can seem just as long to us. I, as the adult doing the microwaving, know that it’ll only take 28 seconds, but Gavin doesn’t understand time the way I do. It’s the same thing with God. He knows exactly how long it’ll take until that thing I want is just right. I don’t know that because I can’t understand time the way that God does, so it may seem like that thing will never happen or never come, but God knows it’s only 28-seconds away.