Wait on the LORD

During the summer of 1958, I spent twenty-one days waiting. Three long weeks of hopeful expectation day after day were spent awaiting the delivery of an archery set from the then popular Eaton’s catalogue. My mother had made the telephone order and told me that it was unlikely the much awaited bow and arrow set would arrive from the Toronto distribution centre that week. I still watched for the delivery truck each day, just in case. There were so many deliveries by Eaton’s in those days that I could observe the Eaton’s truck coming down our long street at the about the same time daily. Each and every day for that three week period I trusted that the truck would indeed pull into our driveway. My faith was renewed each night and I just knew the driver would make the delivery the next day. There was no notice or any forthcoming information from Eaton’s as to why the delivery was delayed. The reason for that is that they probably didn’t know it was delayed. I was the only party who held that opinion. As a child, I remember learning patience on a regular basis. Instant gratification was not a part of my generation’s childhood experience. We learned to wait and hope and then the next day to wait and to hope once again.

Come with me to the summer of 2010. We ordered for Lozanne an Apple iPad directly from the Apple Store Website. It was unavailable in local stores. We were informed clearly at the time of ordering that there would be a ten day wait before shipping probably because the computer had not been built yet. On the tenth day, I received an email informing me that the iPad had been shipped. I was given a tracking website address with the promise that we could follow the progress of the shipment. As a matter of interest, I followed the breathtaking progress of that package from the surprise, to me at least, manufacturing site of Shenzhen, China to Hong Kong, to Memphis, Tennessee, to Toronto and finally to North Bay, Ontario in four days less a few hours. The irony was that it then took three days to move the order the last few hundred kilometres up the highway. All the while, however, I was informed where the package was for the Friday, and the weekend. I knew it would arrive on the Monday. The whole process reminded me of how the wait for expected orders had changed since 1958. There was no wondering and little expectation of gratification daily because I was aware exactly of the location of the prized package. There was no looking for the truck. There was no reacting to the noise of a vehicle in the driveway. The excitement of expectation had been removed from the wait!

The phrase “wait on the LORD” appears three times in the Psalms and twice in the Book of Isaiah. The meaning in each instance is virtually the same. As I was contemplating the differences in waiting between the experiences as described above, I could not help but realize that waiting on the LORD is much more like my 1958 experience than the summer of 2010. In Psalm 27: 14 we read the following encouraging words.

14 Wait on the LORD; Be of good courage, And He shall strengthen your heart; Wait, I say, on the LORD!

Waiting for the LORD involves the same skill set and emotions of my boyhood waiting. In faith, we are to hope for the LORD daily. We are to look for the LORD daily. We are to expect the LORD daily. Finally we are to trust in the LORD daily. Those of us who have had the opportunity to enjoy this hopeful expectation and to have our wait rewarded by joyful communion or answered prayer have no desire for any changes to this ancient and God designed process.

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