Devotional 3-26-11

I Wait for the Lord
Psalm 130

I resonate with the fifth and sixth verses of this Psalm. I have found myself waiting. Many times I am impatient in my waiting. I pray and then wait. My prayer becomes the proverbial computer screen and God the computer. I have pressed the button and wait for the computer to come alive and allow me to get on with my work. Seconds seems like years. I wonder just how long it will take this computer to get active. If the reader is like me you may realize that we have become a nation in search of instant gratification. We stand in the checkout line at the grocery store wondering just how long it is going to take the cashier to finish with the person in front of us. We move to the self check out and suddenly the screen tells us that we need to call for the supervisor. Impatience is our middle name. Patience is a foreign language. I know you are now asking yourself if I am ever going to get to the point.

But the words of the psalmist flow over us as the ocean flows unto the shore line. We feel the warmth and security of the words:


“I wait for the LORD, my soul waits,
And in his word I hope;
My soul waits for the LORD
more than those who watch for the morning
more than those who watch for the morning.”

There have been several times in my life that I have watched for the morning. Some have been fun such as when I was a teen and wanted to tell everyone that I had stayed up all night. Some have been work related such as the youth lock-in I was responsible for when I was a pastor. Some have been difficult as when I sat with a sick child. But none compare to those times when I was troubled and could not sleep. The anxiety and uncertainly of what was forefront in my thoughts kept me from being able to sleep. I truly watched for the morning. I wondered when the dawn would crack the dark sky. As I lay in the bed or sat at the table with a glass of milk I would pray, ask, plead for relief. Can you join me in those experiences?

I have come to realize that God’s time is not my time. There are times that God acts in an instant and other it is generations. Lent gives us an opportunity to wait. As we wait, we experience our humanity and our need for the transcendent one. A chance to realize once again we are not God and therefore we wait………………………………….

Rev. David C. Johnson