Fifth Sunday in Lent
“I wait for the LORD, my soul waits”
We have grown accustomed to immediacy. Remember when you would send an email and then wait a day or two or three for a response? Now we send an email, and if we don’t have a response in four minutes, we send a text to make sure the person got the email. You laugh. This happens.
Our hurried, harried routines spill over into our lives of faith. We send prayers to God, and we wait a day or two or three. And then we pray again, and after four minutes, we send God a text to make sure God got the email. You laugh. This happens.
We have carefully curated and often underused the part of our faith that requires waiting for the Lord.
I was younger, hoping for a meaningful career in something, but fairly lost in my young adulthood. I had worked at Camp Hope for another summer. Since I had nothing else to go to, I stayed through the fall. I did some maintenance projects and welcomed weekend groups. More than all that, I waited. September slid into October, October into November. The months dripped by. I was not in a rush. It had become abundantly clear to me that the Lord was not in a rush either.
I listened deeply that season. Waiting allowed me to hear what I had heard differently before. The meaning and purpose of my life did not lie within me, but safely in the heart of God. I would never have gotten there on my own. I got there only because I was forced to wait and, in waiting, discover the value of patience.
Wait for the Lord this season. “If [the vision] seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay” (Habakkuk 2:3).
Kerry Krause, pastor
Sister Bay Moravian Church
Sister Bay, Wisconsin