Waiters in the Bible: Encouragement Through Shared Experiences

Things Never Go According to Plan…

I wanted to write about waiting. Something to encourage others who were, are, or would be experiencing something similar to what my last few years have been like. I examined my experiences, scoured the scriptures, and organized an outline. I brainstormed and pondered and experimented. I started writing a first draft, then a completely different one. Then I set my pen aside and stuffed the whole idea in the “I can do it later” folder.

Why? Well, I initially got the idea to write this when I thought my waiting might actually be over. I could look back on the past from the perspective and safe distance of the rosy present and write with a clear voice, unimpeded by emotional baggage or distracting distress. But before I managed to write the piece, I caught a whiff of the scent of bad news from afar, and found myself hesitating. The whiff became a hunch, became dread, then finally became official: My waiting was not over. My future now seems even foggier and more uncontrollable than before. Before, I at least had a plan. Now, I’ve lost faith in my plan, and can’t begin to grasp what sort of plans God has for me.

So, instead of writing about waiting for the sake of others, I guess you could say I’m writing about waiting today for my own sake, as yet another attempt to ease the anxiety, disappointment and frustration that continually slap at my mental equilibrium like waves against the legs of stubborn seagoers.

Thanks to all the notes and brainstorming I’ve been doing, not to mention the many times I have employed self-soothing in the recent past, there are any number of ways I could approach the subject of “waiting”. As a matter of fact, I’ve thought about this so much, I could write a series of essays, each one focusing on an entirely different aspect of waiting. I’m talking dissertation level data accumulation here. But, today, to keep things manageable, I thought I’d share something small, specific, and interesting that may be new to people. So, I decided to talk about “waiters in the Bible”.

Yes, before you jump down my throat, I am aware that I may be misusing that word, though I find it ironic on many levels, and most recently because I started a job as a waitress. Now that we’ve cleared that up, let jump right into it.

Lessons for Waiters

Unlike with certain other subjects and questions, if you go looking in the Bible for encouragement or instruction about waiting, the available literature is both easy to find and abundant. You’ve all read it or heard it somewhere, I’m sure. The Bible is also quite matter-of-fact about it. I found 5 clear instructions:

1. Wait PATIENTLY, with trust and self-control.
2. Wait EAGERLY, looking forward to all that God has promised.
3. Wait PRODUCTIVELY, using the time given you to do God’s work where He has you.
4. Wait THANKFULLY, aware and appreciative of the many blessings you continually enjoy.
5. Wait FAITHFULLY, committed to God and His goals for you.

And because all of this can also be unpacked in depth, with sources and cross-references and stories galore, I’m going to deal with each of them in another post. The point is, God has done a lot of work in my life to show me these instructions from His word and teach me to embrace them. Indeed, He’s still working on it, which is perhaps at least part of the reason I’m still waiting.

And while these lessons are perfectly true and have often carried the burden of waiting for me, there have been other times in my waiting when I felt like I needed more than instruction. When I felt beaten down, completely trapped, and hopelessly lost, and the thought of sitting tight and smiling because “God will provide” felt… Well, let’s just say, what I was feeling would at times wholly overwhelm what I understood to be true. But the Bible has an answer for that too.

You see, there are countless scores of persons in the Bible who had to wait, just like I have to, and some of them waited much longer. Some were examples of waiting well, of patience, while others waited poorly, with anxiety, anger, and mistakes. Here’s what I found in the Bible, some fellow “waiters” in the Bible who encourage me when instruction doesn’t, starting from the longest wait times:

Waiters by Wait Time

• 6,000 some odd years the Earth was waited to be released from the curse of sin.
• 2,400 some odd years Israel has waited for her Messiah to return and begin His earthly kingdom reign.
• 2,000 years of collective waiting by the church for her rescue.
• 483 years believing Israel waited for the Messiah to appear.
• 400 (approx.) years Israel waited to be rescued from Egypt
• Abraham was 100 years old when Isaac was born.
• Moses was 80 years old when God gave him a mission, and he only ever got to see the promised land from afar at 120 or so.
• 70 years Israel waited in Babylon and the subsequent kingdoms before some of her people were allowed to return to their land.
• After being freed from Egypt, Israel had to wait and wander aimlessly for 40 years, till all that generation had died, before they could enter the promised land.
• Jesus waited until He was 35 or so before going into ministry.
• David waited approximately 15 years to become king, and 22 years in total to become king of Israel.
• Jacob waited and worked 14 years for Laban in order to marry Rachael.
• From the start of His ministry, Jesus’s disciples waited 3 years for the messianic kingdom to appear, only to be disappointed.
• Elijah hid out in a neighboring country for 2 years (or so I estimate) to avoid execution at the hand of Ahaz and Jezebel.
• Noah and his family waited 40 days for the floods and rains to stop, and spent months waiting for the waters to subside.
• The disciples waited nearly two whole days (by modern reckoning) for Jesus to rise from the dead. After something that hellish, basically hiding in Jerusalem for 7 days (according to some) while waiting for the Holy Spirit and the birth of the church seems like nothing.

Waiting on Him

This list is by no means exhaustive. And when you look at it all at once, maybe it doesn’t really connect, but when you’re in the middle of waiting for something with all your heart, and you read that the disciples put Jesus in a tomb and then were forced by custom and habit to sit on their haunches for the next day and a half… It’s easy to imagine their grief, fear, confusion. The way the thought “Didn’t he say he would rise?” might randomly pop into their heads, only to be swiftly shaken out again by common sense and doubt. The torment of wondering what would happen next; of wondering if there was a next after this. The thought “How could all this be part of God’s plan?” was surely the chorus of the maddening cacophony.

Now imagine two days of that. Imagine 10 days, or 40 days, or 40 years. 40, 80, or 120 years of life wondering if “this” was all you were really meant to do.  Or, don’t imagine someone else’s plight: Remember or recognize your own. Waiting is hard for everyone, and everyone has to do it. That’s what encourages me when emotions have overwhelmed knowledge, and since I’ve very recently been cresting the high waves of faith and patience with purpose and gratitude, and the deep troughs of emotional angst and discouragement, I thought I would take some time to remind myself of what’s true, and of what others have gone through.

You can perhaps see now why I prefer to write about things I’ve passed through, rather than things I’m in the middle of. But I hope some part of this has been encouraging to you as well. Remember, God loves us. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it. If all my life amounts to is waiting on God (in every sense of the word) and knowing Him, then that’s enough.