Waiting in Confidence

"God is good--" our preacher in Washington would say. "All the time," we'd reply.

Then he'd reverse it. "All the time--" "God is good."

It's easiest to grasp that truth in retrospect, after the days of darkness, the nights of grief, the months and even years of waiting are over. Then we know: God is good all the time. All the time, God is good. Even then. Even now. Whether we understand what he's doing or not.

My wife died in childbirth, and the child with her....

I could have married again while I was still young. A congregation likes to have a married minister, and I was introduced to every niece and sister-in-law in a hundred miles. In retrospect, I'm glad for whatever reluctance it was that kept me alone [for more than forty years] until your mother came.

Now that I look back, it seems to me that in all that deep darkness a miracle was preparing.

So I am right to remember it as a blessed time, and myself as waiting in confidence, even if I had no idea what I was waiting for.

(From Gilead,Marilynne Robinson's Pulitzer-prize winning novel.)

Waiting is not the same as wishing. Wishing is wistful; it might well go unfulfilled. But waiting implies a certainty: we wait for a bus, or for Christmas, or for lunch, only because we know it's coming.

And so even if we don't know exactly what it is for which we're waiting--and after all, the best presents are wrapped, are surprises--we can be confident that an end to our waiting will come, and it will be a good ending; for ultimately we are waiting on God. He won't stand us up. He won't leave us looking foolish. He is good to us all the time. All the time, He is good.

So wait for the Lord. Be strong, and take heart, and wait for the Lord.