I’m waiting…

“The LORD is my portion,” says my soul,

“therefore I will hope in him.”

The LORD is good to those who wait for him,

to the soul who seeks him.

It is good that one should wait quietly

for the salvation of the LORD.

Lamentations 3:24-26

Coming on the heels of conviction that God is gracious, loving, and faithful, this next set of lamentations observations provides perspective on the hardest part of suffering… the hardest part is endurance. And the hardest part of endurance is waiting on the Lord. If I am honest, this is where I am now, and have been in various capacities since January 4, 2023.

There are two strategies for waiting that I see in these three verses. The first strategy is what I call “corrective self-talk”. Jeremiah instructed his own soul first… “says my soul” is a personal strategy. We must force ourselves into litanies of faith, putting a certain playlist on repeat in our minds. We should be rehearsing without stopping true songs of hope! Jeremiah just repeats two mantras: “The LORD is my portion.” “I will hope in Him.” And that is what one must do while working through grief and suffering. While waiting well, we engage faith. We refuse to let our souls dwell at length upon negativity. We slap ourselves to faith’s reality. “I WILL HOPE IN GOD!” This corrects our tendency to deep dive into the murky depths of the coldness of our misery.

The second strategy is to “concentrate on goodness.” The LORD is good to those who wait. In the moment, while I am waiting, God is (present tense) good! Yes… He is! We will bring good. He will reward the waiting. He will Himself be that reward. He cannot be anything less than holy, loving, gracious, and merciful as a Father to those who hurt. But we must wait. Also, as hard as it is to accept, the truth is that verse 26 is the infallible Word of God: It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. It is a good thing, even in pain, even in lament, to wait for God’s time of healing and salvation.

When Joni was first diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, we knew all we could do was wait. We waited together in hopes that perhaps medicine could give us two more precious years. When that was not what God had for us, we waited for what extremely precious words and time we could have… to fill our remaining days with as much love and faith a possible. And now I wait alone, with God, for God to continue to help me understand and unfold what my future holds. I said at the very beginning of all this that the rock star Tom Petty was an insightful theologian: “The waiting is the hardest part.” But now I really do trust in this: The waiting, even after loss, will be the good part. God says it is so. I believe it. I am starting to see it. I know it is good, not because I enjoy the wait, rather it is because I am upheld by the God for Whom I am waiting, and He is very, very good!