Scripture: 1 Kings 19:11–13; Isaiah 40:28–31; Luke 2:25–38
Last week, in our Walking Faithfully series, we began with lament—the courage to tell God the truth. We heard the psalmist cry, “How long, O Lord?” We remembered that even Jesus, from the cross, gave voice to the anguish of feeling abandoned. We learned that lament is not faith walking away. Lament is faith remaining in the relationship when the answers have not come.
But after we have asked the question, morning still arrives. The alarm clock rings. The dog needs to go out. The dishes are still in the sink. The doctor’s appointment remains on the calendar. The difficult conversation still waits. The person we love is still struggling. The decision is still unclear. Life does not pause simply because we have reached the edge of what we understand.
So today we ask the next question: How do we live faithfully while we are waiting? What do we do in that long space between the prayer and the answer—between what we have asked God to do and what we can presently see?
Waiting is not easy for us. We are not a people who have developed a particularly graceful relationship with delay. We press the elevator button and then press it again, as though the elevator may not have understood the seriousness of our request. We choose a checkout at the store based on calculations worthy of NASA. Three people in that lane. Four in this one. But that woman has coupons. He has produce that will need to be weighed. We make our choice. And immediately, the other line begins moving faster.
Waiting does strange things to us. It sharpens our impatience. It invites overthinking. It makes us vulnerable to anyone who speaks with confidence. We do not simply want things to happen. We want to know when they will happen, how they will happen, and whether there is anything we can do to move the process along. Preferably by this afternoon.
But much of life cannot be hurried. Healing cannot always be hurried. Grief cannot be hurried. Reconciliation cannot be hurried. Clarity cannot always be hurried. And God, despite our many suggestions, does not seem committed to working according to our preferred schedule. So we wait. And we wait. And we wait.
But biblical waiting is not the same as doing nothing. It is not folding our hands, staring anxiously at the sky, and refusing to move until God sends a detailed memorandum. Faithful waiting is an active life of attention. It is remaining near to God, tending what has been placed in our care, and learning to recognize grace when it enters the room.
Isaiah speaks first to the weariness of waiting. “Don’t you know? Haven’t you heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth. He doesn’t grow tired or weary.” That sounds like good news because we certainly do. We become tired. Not only physically tired, though some of us know that kind of tired very well. There is also the weariness that settles into the spirit. The weariness of carrying the same concern month after month. The weariness of trying to make a faithful decision when every choice seems to carry some loss. The weariness of listening to the news and wondering how much more brokenness the world can absorb.
Isaiah does not scold the weary. He does not say, “If your faith were stronger, you would not be tired.” He says even the young grow tired. Even the strong stumble. Weariness is not a moral failure. It is part of being human. The promise is not that faithful people will never become exhausted. The promise is that our exhaustion is not the end of the story. God gives power to the tired and revives the exhausted. We are told those who hope in the Lord shall renew their strength. They will rise on wings like eagles. They will run and not be weary. They will walk and not faint.
I have always appreciated that Isaiah ends with walking. Soaring is impressive. Running is admirable. But some days, walking is the miracle. Some days faithfulness is not rising above everything with the majestic strength of an eagle. Some days faithfulness is getting dressed. Making the phone call. Showing up for the appointment. Praying one honest sentence. Taking one step without knowing what the step after that will be. God does not always give us strength for the entire journey at once. Often, grace arrives as enough strength for today. Enough for this conversation. Enough to keep loving. Enough to keep showing up. Waiting faithfully begins, not with proving how strong we are, but with receiving strength from God.
That brings us to Elijah. When Elijah stands upon the mountain, he is not a calm spiritual master conducting a seminar on contemplative prayer. He is exhausted. He has been frightened. He has been isolated. He has spent himself in conflict and has reached the point where he has very little left.
The larger story tells us that before Elijah arrives at the mountain, God cares for his body. God gives him food. God gives him water. God allows him to sleep. Only after Elijah has rested does the journey continue. There is something wonderfully practical about that. Sometimes we are trying to solve the meaning of our entire life when what we really need is lunch and a nap. But I am not prepared to dismiss the spiritual value of a good liverwurst and mustard.
God remembers that Elijah is a whole person—body, mind, and spirit. Rest is not spiritual failure. Receiving care is not weakness. Seeing a physician, speaking with a counselor, calling a trusted friend, accepting a meal—these may be among the ordinary ways grace comes to us. Sometimes faithful waiting means allowing ourselves to be tended.
Then Elijah reaches the mountain. A great wind comes, tearing at the rocks. But God is not in the wind. Then an earthquake. But God is not in the earthquake. Then fire. But God is not in the fire. And after the fire comes what Scripture describes as a gentle whisper—or, in another translation, the sound of sheer silence. The noise settles. The spectacle ends. Elijah listens.
It would be easy to reduce this story to the simple lesson that God always speaks quietly. But Scripture does not allow us to turn God into another formula. God sometimes speaks through thunder. God sometimes speaks through prophets. God sometimes speaks through unexpected visitors, persistent widows, and children who ask questions at inconvenient moments. The point is not that God is always quiet. The point is that Elijah must learn not to confuse drama with presence. The loudest thing is not always the holiest thing. The most confident voice is not always the wisest voice. The most spectacular possibility is not always the faithful path.
When we are waiting for direction, we may become so hungry for certainty that we begin looking for signs everywhere. An advertisement appears in our feed, and we wonder whether God has issued instructions. A bird lands on the windowsill, and we consider it a sign for life change. But let’s not mock our desire for guidance. It comes from a real place. We want to know what to do. We want reassurance. We want to believe that we are not alone. But faithful attention does not mean forcing every coincidence to carry the full weight of divine revelation. Sometimes a bird is simply a bird. Sometimes the ad in our feed was selected by an algorithm that knows far too much about us.
Faithful discernment is usually slower, more grounded, and less dramatic. We listen. We pray. We think. We seek wisdom. We remain close to Scripture. We listen to people whose faith we trust. We pay attention to what leads toward love, toward truth, toward mercy, toward courage and deeper relationship. We ask whether what we believe we are hearing sounds anything like Jesus. Does it lead us toward compassion or contempt? Toward truth or denial? Toward mercy or cruelty? The waiting itself can become a school of attention.
That is what we see most clearly in Simeon and Anna. Luke tells us that Simeon was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel. The Holy Spirit rested upon him, and he had received a promise that he would see God’s Messiah. Anna had also spent years waiting. She had known love, and she had known loss. She had lived as a widow for much of her long life. Luke tells us that she remained in the temple, worshiping with prayer and fasting.
We often rush quickly to the day Jesus arrives. But we should not rush past the years before that day. Simeon had shown up on many days when nothing remarkable appeared to happen. Anna had prayed through countless ordinary mornings. She had worshiped when there was no angel choir, no sudden revelation, no obvious evidence that God’s promise was about to be fulfilled. They waited. They prayed. They worshiped. They remained available. They practiced attention.
Then, one day, a young couple entered the temple carrying a baby. There was nothing outwardly spectacular about the scene. No earthquake shook the walls. No wind tore through the courtyard. No fire fell from heaven. Just a mother. A father. A child. People may have passed them without a second glance. They were one more family among many families. One more child among many children. But Simeon saw. Anna saw. They recognized grace when grace entered the room.
Why? Not because they possessed secret information unavailable to everyone else. They saw because years of faithful attention had trained their eyes. They had remained near to God long enough to recognize the movement of the Spirit. They had practiced hope before they received fulfillment. They had cultivated attention before there was anything obvious to see. Waiting had formed them.
That may be the most important truth in these Scriptures: waiting is not only the empty space before something happens. Waiting can become a place where something happens within us. We become more discerning. More attentive to small mercies. More able to recognize the sacredness of an ordinary moment. We begin to notice the phone call that comes when we feel especially alone. The meal left at the door. The strength to do something today that we could not do yesterday. The forgiveness beginning. The conversation that does not solve everything but opens one small door. The quiet sense that we are not yet finished. Grace does not always enter the room wearing a name tag. Faithful waiting teaches us to recognize grace without demanding fireworks.
So how do we practice this kind of waiting? First, we receive the strength God gives. We stop treating exhaustion as evidence of spiritual failure. We rest when rest is needed. We allow others to help. We receive care.
Second, we remain near to the means of grace. John Wesley used that phrase to describe the ordinary practices through which we make ourselves available to God: prayer, Scripture, Holy Communion, worship, Christian fellowship, acts of mercy. These practices do not control God. The means of grace are not transactions. They are places of availability. They place us among people who can carry faith for us when our own faith feels thin. They slowly train our attention. Simeon and Anna recognized Christ because they had practiced being present. We stay near the means of grace not to force God to appear, but to become people who are more likely to recognize grace when it does appear.
Third, we tend what God has already placed in our care. This is where waiting becomes active. There are things we cannot control. We cannot force another person to change. We cannot command grief to end. We cannot make clarity arrive before it is ready. But there are things we can tend. We can tend our prayers. We can tend our relationships. We can tend our bodies. We can tend the ministry God has placed in our hands. We can tend our community. We can tend the small corner of the world where our choices make a difference.
Anyone who has ever cared for a garden knows that tending is not the same as controlling. You cannot stand over a tomato plant and demand that it produce by Thursday. You can water it. You can weed around it. You can protect it from disease. You can make room for light. You can tend the conditions in which life may grow. That is faithful waiting. We tend what has been entrusted to us, and we release what remains beyond our control. We pray, but we do not manipulate. We hope, but we do not pretend. We act, but we do not assume that everything depends upon us. We keep showing up. We keep loving. We keep practicing mercy. We keep paying attention. And slowly, perhaps without our even noticing, the waiting trains our eyes.
And so, we remain confident—God has not forgotten us in the waiting. Our weariness does not disqualify us. Our inability to see the whole road does not mean there is no road. We receive the strength given for today. We remain near the places where grace has met God’s people. We tend what has been placed in our hands. And we keep our eyes open.
Grace may not arrive with wind, with an earthquake, or with fire. It may enter quietly. It may look ordinary. It may come through a person you nearly overlooked, a word you were finally ready to hear, a kindness you did not expect, or enough courage to take the next faithful step.
Today’s scriptures remind us: faithful waiting is not empty time. It is an active life of attention. It is allowing God to sustain us, tending what we have been given, and learning to recognize the grace we are led to.
Amen and amen.
In My Words 