“The LORD is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD.”
— Lamentations 3:25-26 (King James Version)
You know the feeling. You refresh the inbox for the reply that hasn't come. You sit in the beige quiet of a waiting room, watching the second hand crawl. You've done the work, said the prayer, made the call — and now there is nothing to do but wait, which is the one thing none of us is any good at. Waiting feels like failure dressed up as patience. We suspect that if we were only doing more, the answer would already be here.
But the writer of Lamentations penned these words from the rubble of a fallen city, with far more reason to despair than a slow Monday gives us. And into that wreckage he insists on something almost scandalous: that it is good — not merely bearable, but good — to hope and to wait quietly. Waiting, he tells us, is not the empty space between real life. It is real life, and it is where the soul does its deepest seeking.
St. Augustine, the fourth-century bishop whose Confessions still speaks to anyone who has ever felt divided against themselves, gave us the line, "Our heart is restless until it rests in Thee." He understood that our restlessness is not a defect to be scolded away but a compass — it points us toward the very rest we are straining after. The waiting itself is the seeking.
Centuries later Charles Spurgeon, the great London preacher known for meeting ordinary people in their ordinary worries, liked to remind his listeners that hope is not passive. To wait upon God, he taught, is not to fold your hands in resignation but to keep your face turned toward the horizon, expecting good. That is the difference between merely killing time and holding on with quiet confidence.
So here is your encouragement for today: the pause you resent may be the place you are being made ready. You are not behind. You are not forgotten in the beige waiting room. Keep seeking — keep your face to the horizon — and let your waiting be the confident, expectant kind. Goodness has a way of arriving to those who do not give up watching for it.
A Prayer for Today
Giver of every good thing, teach me the quiet courage to wait without losing heart. When answers are slow and the silence is long, keep my face turned toward hope and my soul steady in seeking You. Let this waiting become the place where I am made ready. Amen.