Waiting on the Lord

When Mary and Joseph took Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem he was eight days old. There they met a man named Simeon. “He loved God,” the Gospel of Luke says, “and was waiting for God to save the people of Israel. God's Spirit came to him and told him that he would not die until he had seen Christ the Lord” (4:25-26). Simeon had been waiting patiently for God to fulfill his promise. We don’t know how old Simeon was, but it is likely that he had been waiting a long time when he finally saw eight-day-old Jesus. Think about it: this man did not give up. If he had failed to wait on the Lord, he would have missed his reason for being alive.

We need the faith and patience of Simeon, because we too are called on to wait for what we want from God. What matters is not how long we have to wait for what we want, but the kind of persons we become in the waiting.

Here are the questions to ask yourself as you think of what you are “waiting on the Lord” to see. Am I becoming more loving? Am I becoming more patient? Am I honestly praying, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven?” Am I trusting God to use me to get his will done?

You may be aware that Billy Graham turned 93 recently. In his wonderful book, Nearing Home, he says, “I was taught how to die, but nobody ever taught me how to grow old.” He writes that his wife Ruth wanted a specific saying on her tombstone. She was driving through an area of road construction once. When she finally came to the end of all the markers and equipment along the road, she saw this sign: “END OF CONSTRUCTION. THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE.” Those words are over her grave. They are about waiting patiently for the Lord. Each of us is a construction project. We need patience to wait on the Lord.