This blog was originally written by Winnie Mughogho and posted on TGC Africa.
She sits in the waiting room, stealing glances at the clock as though looking often enough might persuade time to move faster. Every name the receptionist calls that isn’t hers brings disappointment. Her foot taps beneath the chair. She folds and unfolds her hands. She whispers prayers no one else can hear. Please let me be next. Perhaps she is waiting for a doctor, for test results that could change everything. Maybe she’s waiting to hear whether the shadow on the scan has a name. Or perhaps the waiting room isn’t a hospital at all. She’s waiting for the email with a job offer; for her prodigal son to come home; for the ache of the grief to soften.
How Long, Oh Lord, Must I Wait?
Waiting is hard. Who’d disagree? It’s one of the deepest aches the human heart can know, because it asks us to live between the space of what we hope for and what is; between prayer and answer. Waiting feels like lying awake in the darkness while the whole world sleeps. You check the clock again. 2:15am. Then 2:27am, 2:39am. When will the morning come?
Some nights are not measured by hours but years. Years of longing for a child while another Mother’s Day quietly passes. Years of wondering why everyone else seems to be moving forward while your life feels stuck. Waiting is exhausting and eventually you stop asking, “when?” and begin asking, “why?”
Throughout the Bible, the Lord’s people are often found waiting. It’s woven into the fabric of redemptive history. Think of Abram. God had promised him offspring as numerous as the stars in the sky. Yet ten years down the line there wasn’t as much as a grain of stardust. There was no indication whatsoever that God’s promise would be fulfilled. The night was long; the sky dark. The watchman waited for dawn, but the son seemed hidden behind the clouds.
The thing about darkness is that it alters our perception of reality. Trees all of a sudden become frightening shapes. Waiting does the same. The longer we wait, the more difficult it becomes to separate what we feel from what we know to be true. We know God is always with us, but our hearts begin to wonder.
Giving in to the Darkness
Not long ago I opened my journal and reread a list of prayer requests I’d written at the beginning of the year. Some had been answered; but many others hadn’t. As I traced my finger down the page, I remembered how much faith I’d had that God would grant them. I prayed through scripture and with hope, yet prayers remained unanswered. A troubling thought crossed my mind. Does God really give better gifts than my earthly father? I knew the answer is Yes. However, it certainly didn’t feel like that at the time.
Coming back to Abraham, he believed God’s promise (Romans 4:18). Only, Abraham and Sarah didn’t wait well. Rather than trusting God they offered him help that he didn’t need or ask for. Sarah urged Abram to take her maidservant instead: Hagar. And “Abram listened to the voice of Sarai” (Genesis 16:2). I think those words deliberately echo Eden. Just as Adam listened to Eve and took what God had forbidden, Abraham listened to Sarah and took what wasn’t his. When they should’ve closed their hands in prayer they instead opened them to grasp. Instead of pleading with God to take away the temptation they played God (Galatians 4:23).
If the night has been long, pause for a moment. What has the darkness been tempting you to reach for? Are you forcing God to open certain doors while hesitating to walk through those he’s already opened? Or are you trying to numb the pain with endless entertainment, mindless scrolling or endless work? Anything to escape the ache of another day that looks exactly like yesterday.
Be careful. Sin rarely announces itself as rebellion. More often than not, it arrives disguised as relief. But every shortcut to peace eventually becomes a longer road to sorrow. The child Abraham grasped for became a source of grief. So I plead with you, keep waiting rather than seeking a dawn of your own making. Don’t wait because it’s easy. Wait because the one you are waiting on is faithful.
Seeing and Being Seen in the Dark
Hagar’s conception of Ishmael led to her rejection. She was sent out into the wilderness, alone; so she thought. But the God who sees, El-Roi, hadn’t taken his eyes off of her. The same God hasn’t taken his eyes off you.
God sees you. Not the polished version that smiles through church on Sunday morning, but the weary and disappointed you. He sees you lying awake long after everyone else has fallen asleep, sobbing into the pillow. He sees the sorrow in your tears, which have been misconstrued for happiness. Another wedding, another bridesmaid dress, and you are still waiting for one of his sons to come and sweep you off your feet. God sees it all.
“Everything is needful that he sends; nothing can be needful that he withholds,” so John Newton once said. I quote this, not to minimise your pain. But sometimes God’s greatest gifts aren’t what we seek, but his own presence as we recognise that he was always what we needed most. And the greatest proof that God doesn’t withhold good from us is that he did gave up his only Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Waiting for the Son
Abraham and Sarah’s long wait pointed beyond itself to a greater story. Isaac was the son of promise. Only he wasn’t the promised Son. Generation after generation waited for the Son through whom God would bless the nations. Then, “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son” (Galatians 4:4), Jesus Christ—not a day too early, not a day too late.
So now we continue to wait. We aren’t merely waiting for difficult seasons to end or long-held prayers to be answered. We’re waiting on Christ, the Son who entered our darkness in his first coming and who has promised to return in glory. He is our highest good, the one in whom our desires are and will ultimately be satisfied. One day we shall behold the Son. Until then: “Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD” (Psalm 27:14).