"Waiting" carries so many connotations—tension, expectation, worry, time, patience, impatience, hope, fear—but if we're being completely honest with ourselves, it usually isn't a discipline that comes easily or enjoyably to us.
It's true that waiting, at times, can make the final product sweeter: waiting for a wedding day, for example, or waiting for the ability to go to the grocery store and take as much time as you need to get whatever you need whenever you need. In that way, it can be a blessing in that it increases our thankfulness for the good when it comes.
But in other ways, waiting can be tear-your-hair-out difficult. And that's the waiting that is laced with uncertainty.
In our current context, we have no choice but to wait, and while going to the grocery store is something we can anticipate, there are other uncertainties that we may be awaiting in fear. Expenses once the world opens up again, economic repercussions of the closure, health risks due to second waves or asymptomatic cases. Outside of the COVID context, you may just be waiting for purpose, uncertain of God's will for your life and struggling to grasp what exactly He has called you to do.
I understand that. I really do. It's a demoralizing, suffocating, overwhelming feeling.
But this morning, God is reminding me that the feeling of uncertainty tends to come when we expend too much focus on waiting for the wrong things. That strength and courage and hope are available to those who choose to wait on Him instead.
"Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord." ~Psalm 27: 14
Waiting on God does not mean staring fixedly at the part of our life that worries us until He does something about it. It means putting all that in His hands, fixing our attention on Him instead of our uncertainties. It means surrendering to the peace to be found in his Presence right now, and leaving the rest in His hands with a prayer of "Thy will be done." That's the kind of waiting that brings courage in uncertainty—the kind that leaves the future where it belongs, and dwells with God in the present.