Everyone has endured the endless traffic light, the queue that goes nowhere, the elevator music piped through the phone line. But what of those periods in your life when everything seems on hold? When you can’t do the next thing in your professional or personal life because you can’t get to it?
Waiting—be it for health, a life partner, a child, a job—can be an agony. The persistently unrealized goal feels like an endless road. And hope’s constant deferment can be exhausting. A firm answer against the thing you’re hoping for—”no”—might be easier than this constant lack of closure. But what if waiting means to be something else? Waiting doesn’t have to mean idleness. Our prolonged state of need might teach us to look beyond the desired goal to something infinitely better. We find lessons on this throughout the Bible and, if we are paying attention, in our own lives. Rather than fostering frustration, periods of waiting might have great truths to tell us. It might show us that hope is worthwhile.
Waiting might even be a gift in and of itself.
“Rebecca Brewster Stevenson’s writing is consistently powerful, complex, honest, and hopeful.”
-Andy Crouch
– Everyone waits for something; gather a group who would like to talk about that
– Order /Wait/ & the Study Guide
– Read the chapter sometime during the week before meeting
– Each person may do the homework before the group meets, which enhances personal understanding & group discussion
(In-person or Zoom)
A beautifully written reflection on waiting that weaves together Scripture, poetry, and the author’s personal story. I found the chapters on home/exile and expectation/expectancy especially helpful. – April Yamasaki More of Her Thoughts Here…
Rebecca Brewster Stevenson’s writing is consistently powerful, complex, honest, and hopeful. – Andy Crouch
With its compelling vision and practical wisdom, this is a book in which substance meets–even surpasses–style.” – Karen Swallow Prior
Further Up, Further In, oil canvas by Hilary Siber Edwards
“Despite the colorful recognizable content of the painting’s edges, the eye is drawn to the bright core. Siber has painted her experience since the loss of her father. At his death, she began her wait to be reunited with him. Indeed, her longing for union with Christ himself has continued to increase since that death. And yet she lives here, grounded in the liminal space that is this world. Thus her painting represents her hope in what she cannot see, even as she lives out her present life in what she can see.”
[Excerpt from Wait, Thoughts and Practice in Waiting on God]
