How do we wait well?

I don’t like waiting. Most of us don’t. Whether it’s waiting for the bus or for prayer to be answered, waiting is hard.

Right now I can think of friends waiting for an improvement in a health condition; waiting for the restoration of a broken relationship; waiting for a family member to come to Christ; waiting for a ministry opportunity; waiting for justice to come. They’re all clear that it hurts.

Part of the reason we find waiting difficult is our tendency to want things now. That’s understandable when facing the horrors of this fallen world, but it’s also exacerbated by the impatience of the ‘instant gratification’ culture that surrounds us. Our expectation is that things should happen quickly. But I suspect it’s also hard because we tend to see waiting as a waste of time. Many of us are activists at heart. We feel like we’re only being constructive if we’re doing something. Waiting feels so passive, so fruitless, so infuriatingly pointless.