a god who waits

Yet the Lord waits to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion.  For the Lord is a God of justice.  Blessed are all who wait for him! (Isaiah 30:18)


There are a lot of places in Scripture, I am learning, that encourage us to wait for the Lord.  Thank you Andrew Murray.  And I am trying to discover exactly what that means and what it looks like in the life of a very ordinary man.  One thing I am coming to see more and more is that I have always thought of waiting for God as something to do, when, in fact, waiting for God is a way to be.  "This blessed waiting," writes Andrew Murray, "must and can be the very breath of our life--a continuous resting in God's presence and his love, an unceasing yielding of ourselves for him to perfect his work in us." 

But here, in Isaiah 30, the idea of waiting takes a delightful turn.  Here, instead of us waiting for God, we have a beautiful picture of God waiting for us.  A picture of God waiting, even longing (as the NIV translates it), to be gracious to us.  A picture of a God that is so ready to pour out his grace and his love and his compassion on us, that he can hardly contain himself--if only we would turn to him and receive it.  A God who is waiting for us to wait for him. 

O my children, if only you would turn your gaze and your heart to me.  If only you would lay the head of your soul on the heart of Love and wait for all that Love yearns to bestow.  Then you would know me the way I long to be known.  And then you would know yourselves as I know you.  O my Beloved, wait for me.




Just as a weaned child on its mother's breast seeks no physical nourishment but enjoys the riches of unspoken Love given and received, so the soul in quiet adoration lays its head against the heart of Love and absorbs all that Love yearns to bestow.  This Love draws out what is truest and best in all it touches, shapes all things toward the wholeness proper to them, is quietly victorious amid the strident self-importance of the world. (John S. Mogabgab, Weavings, March/April 2008)