Finding Hope In Seasons of Waiting

Are you in a season of waiting?

We’ve all been there.

Between us, we’ve waited for jobs, spouses and places to live.

We’ve waited for houses to sell, businesses to take off and wayward children to come home.

We’ve waited in exam rooms and by hospital beds.

We’ve waited for healing of broken marriages and broken bodies, addiction and despair.

Some of us have longed and waited for years for a child to call our own.

We wait,

hoping, praying, begging,

that he would hear our cries,

that he would answer.

We wonder and hope, wrestle and doubt, pray and long, and sometimes as we wait, discouragement rolls in like thick fog blanketing everything it touches.

It disorients and blinds and skews our sight line until we lose perspective and feel the weight of its dewy whiteness settling all around us.

This year we have waited.

We waited for days in a hospital by the side of our boy hoping he would be ok.

We have waited, week after week and month after month for a job.

And I must confess, that as we’ve waited, I have allowed the dewy whiteness of discouragement to take hold more than a few times.

I fall to my knees beneath its weight.

There on my knees crying out for help, I realize that my gaze is fixed on the thing I am hoping for rather than the one who is my hope.

My hope is the beginning and the end, the author and perfecter of my faith, the giver of every good and perfect give, my redeemer and savior, my comforter and friend.

My hope is Christ who came to seek and save the lost.

There on my knees, beneath the weight of discouragement and despair, he lifts the thick dewy fog from around me and reminds me.

He will never left me or forsake me. (Deuteronomy 31:6)

He will work all things together according to his purposes for my good. (Romans 8:28)

Those who hope in the lord will renew their strength. (Isaiah 40:3)

He is close to the broken hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. (Psalm 34:18)

He is before all things and in him all things hold together. (Colossians 1:17)

He holds the power to conquer sin and death. (1 Corinthians 15:57)

His faithfulness will be my shield. (Psalm 91:4)

Dear friend, if you are in a season of waiting, I pray that you would experience the presence and peace of Christ as you wait. I pray that he would fill you with hope as you fix your eyes on him.