Waiting on God

Waiting on God may be the hardest part of the spiritual life, even though it requires nothing but openness. We’re so accustomed to doing things for ourselves, staying constantly busy about our own projects, that waiting for anything, let alone God, is torturous.

We cry out, tempted in the desert, but we can only hope for a response to our suffering. In the meantime, we are filled with doubt. Does He care? Does He even hear me? Satan is all around me, harassing me. Why is God allowing this?

The temptation to analyze the quality of our prayer adds to the agony of our waiting. But this is no time for over thinking. It’s time for wrestling against our own restlessness, being still, and permitting God to work in silence, in ways known only to Him.

We have to accept that we can’t control everything. We hear lots of people promising us that this “new program,” or that “new initiative,” is going to change the world. Nonsense. Only God’s grace, only His mercy, will renew the face of the earth. Only saints create.

And while we wait, the angst pains us. A demonic urge to change everything quickly is only making it more difficult to deal with God in reality, according to His ways, which are not our ways. God waits. He even endures temptation in the desert.

In the desert, Satan tempted Jesus to take matters into His own hands, not to wait on God. He seduced the first Adam to resent waiting, perhaps he might cause this New Adam to fall as well by convincing Him to resent the Father’s patient ways.

If the architects of this culture would man up and say plainly, “We’re just not that into God,” instead of all this talk about God “blessing this or that country,” and God “making it possible for me to win this game,” we all might benefit from the honesty.

Whatever else we give up for Lent, let it be something that will bring us to agonize in the experience of waiting. The intense struggle of waiting can bring about such change in us if we persevere in this, the greatest of contests for modern man.

If we know anything of God, we know He is mysterious and hidden, that He’s patient and seems perfectly fine with waiting. I just hope He waits long enough for us to change, long enough for us to learn how to depend on Him. +