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Weekly Devotional

July 27, 2009

God’s Peace be with you all.

Psalm 130:1-8  Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD.  ² Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications!  ³ If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand?  ⁴ But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered.  ⁵ I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope;  ⁶ my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning.  ⁷ O Israel, hope in the LORD! For with the LORD there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem.  ⁸ It is he who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities.

            How much of your life do you spend waiting on things?  Perhaps it is for the mail to come, the pizza delivery guy, or for an important email.  Perhaps you are waiting for something more important, like medical results, or a paycheck.  We spend much of our lives waiting and waiting and waiting.  In the end, many of us probably see waiting as a waste of time.  It can build anxiety, anger, fear, or many other emotions.  Waiting is a place that we want to move out of, and to get on with the other details of our lives.

            Have you ever thought that waiting is one of the gifts that God has given us?  After all, if we look at the biblical stories, we see a God who is waiting.  The story of Jesus’ death and resurrection show us that we have not only a God who is waiting, but a God who is WILLING to wait.  God could have come to earth and solved many problems instantly…whether it was delivering the Hebrews out of the land of Egypt, giving them the Promised Land, or saving all his people from the power of death and sin.  However, we see that God is patient and willing to wait. 

            In his book “Finding My Way Home”, Henri J. M. Nouwen writes “waiting, as we see it in the people on the first pages of the Gospel, is waiting with a sense of promise. Those who were waiting had each received a promise that gave them courage and allowed them to wait.  They received something that was at work in them, a seed that had started to grow.”  At baptism, we are each given a promise as well.  That promise is that we are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.  God has claimed us as one of his own.  Through our relationships with God, and through prayer, we are continually reminded of the promise that God has made with us.  It is also through prayer that we are reminded that waiting is not such a bad thing, as we have a God who is continually waiting on us. 

In our prayers this week: 

Doris, Mary Netta, Ann, Joseph, Jane, Irene, St. John’s Lutheran Church, and Michael (serving in Iraq).

God’s Peace,

Pastor Judson