250 Words About Waiting

This week’s devotional is titled “waiting to receive instructions.” The Scriptures and prayers are centered around waiting. It’s quite appropriate, as we are in the seventh week of Easter waiting for the celebration of the Holy Spirit’s arrival on Pentecost Sunday.

Think of all of the waiting we do in the Christian calendar year. Advent—waiting for the arrival of the Christ child. Lent—waiting for the crucifixion and waiting three more days for the wonderful resurrection. Then immediately we begin waiting for the Spirit. For those of us who don’t like waiting, we finally get ordinary time until November when we’re not waiting for anything.

But we are. As believers of Christ we cannot go a day without waiting because we believe in the promise of Christ’s return. I empathize with the early church who waited more expectantly than we. While they waited for the return of Christ, they never saw him.

It must have been frustrating. We hear promises that our scarlet sins will be made like snow (Is. 1:18), though we see our sins ever before us. We hear every knee shall bow to praise God (Phil. 2:9-11), though we know so many do not believe. We hear that swords will become plowshares (Is. 2:4). But we know war in Iraq, conflict in the Congo, genocide in Sudan. So we wait.

But the early Christians teach us a lesson. We are people of hope, after all, and hope carries such high expectations. Hope waits, already claiming the victory!