“Waiting on the Pitch—and Other Things to Wait On”
I like to play slow-pitch softball, but I am not hitting well these days. I think I know what the problem is: I swing before the pitch is there. Needless to say (but of course I will say it anyway), it is very difficult to hit a ball that’s not there.
Waiting in general is not my best activity. I am a very impatient person. And yet, almost everything has as one of its components waiting. Waiting for vegetables in the garden to ripen, waiting for dinner to be ready, waiting on red lights while I’m driving. The waiting list is very long.
In the Old Testament, there are many verses that speak of waiting on God. Here is one of those verses:
“Wait for the LORD;
be strong, and let your heart take courage;
wait for the LORD!”
Apparently, it takes strength and courage to wait on God. But why do we have to wait in the first place? Why doesn’t give us what we need and want right now?
I suppose there are many possible reasons why we need to wait. Maybe, just maybe, God’s timing is better than ours. The fact that we think we need or want something right now doesn’t mean that we, in fact, do need that something right now.
Also, there is an old saying that you don’t hear often in our on-demand-one-click world: “What we gain too easily we esteem to lightly.” Perhaps God’s delays are designed to help us better appreciate what he is doing in our lives.
But the truth—or at least my truth—is this. I don’t know why God sometimes delays things. And frankly, I don’t like it. Perhaps the psalmist had to repeat the words “wait on the LORD” because we/I did not hear the words the first time.
Be that as it may, I need to learn wait on the pitch, especially if God is the pitcher.
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