In the Waiting

My third 30-Day Devotional “In the Waiting” was not a project I undertook with great enthusiasm. And, being honest, it’s the only writing project I look back on with real regret. Don’t get me wrong. The end result wasn’t bad. It has merit and was actually one of my more successful devotionals. But, I still look back on it with regret because I wasn’t quite obedient when writing it, and not quite obedient is the same as disobedient. I don’t like waiting, and it’s a deeply personal struggle for me. Thus, I don’t want to talk about it, and I don’t want to write about it. Hard pass! 

So, as I was writing a devotional study about waiting because I felt led to even if I didn’t want to, there were times I would purposefully change illustrations to be less personal, or there were times when I wasn’t as honest or open as I knew I should have been. And, the few times I was obediently open, I did so begrudgingly at best. That’s why I look back on the project with regret. I can’t help wondering what more God might have had for me in the experience of writing it if I had been more obedient and possibly what more He might have had for those reading it. Needless to say, those wonderings do not evoke warm and fuzzy feelings. (I know, some highlight this is turning out to be…) 

At the same time, I’m sort of glad I have that one project I can’t remember without a twinge of regret because it nudges me to be obedient, to get over myself and follow the Lord’s direction, when the non-sharer, closed-book part of me who’s more open in writing than in conversation but still struggles with that wants to tweak illustrations and hold back, to not be quite honest. Sometimes I need that. I don’t want another project that I know I didn’t go about with the right attitude or write the way I should have. So, I’m genuinely grateful for “In the Waiting.” After all, hard lessons are still lessons.

As with the highlights from “Do You Believe?” and “Standing Strong,” below is one of the devotionals from “In the Waiting.” It’s one that the pessimist in me really needed to go back and reread as I was trying to select one for this post, and I hope it blesses you too.

Days without Hope

“My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and are spent without hope.” -Job 7:6

Job 7:1-21

Recently, I’ve been studying Job in my personal Bible study. Everyone is really familiar with the beginning of Job and of course the ending. The middle, however, sort of gets lost.

Our passage for today comes after Job has lost everything—his livestock, most of his servants, all his children, and his health. It also comes after his incredibly supportive wife urges him to just curse God and die, and after Eliphaz becomes the first of his “friends” to tell him his suffering is the result of some secret sin in his life. Thus, Job is, understandably, in a place of complete despair. His days are spent without hope (Job 7:6). He believes he’ll never see good again (Job 7:7). His spirit is in anguish, and his soul in bitterness (Job 7:11). Even in sleep, he finds no escape, no comfort or relief (Job 7:13-14). And, he’s waiting—but not for things to get better, not for physical healing or any kind of restoration. No, he has no hope of that. At this point, Job is waiting for death. In his complaint to God, he makes the statement: “…my soul chooseth strangling, and death rather than my life. I loathe it; I would not live always: let me alone; for my days are vanity” (Job 7:15-16). Later, he adds, “…for now shall I sleep in the dust; and thou shalt seek me in the morning, but I shall not be” (Job 7:21).

Job honestly thought all hope was gone. He honestly believed he was nearing the end of his life, that he would never know joy or happiness again. But, Job was wrong. There was so much going on behind the scenes that he didn’t know about, and God had a far better ending to his story in mind.

My point: When you feel like your days are without hope, when you’re bitter and broken and tempted to give in to despair and believe things will never get better, choose instead to wait in hope. Choose to believe God is at work behind the scenes writing a better ending. Even when it’s hard, even when it hurts, choose to hope because, as long as there’s a good God in Heaven (and there always has been and always will be), there will never be so much as a single day that is truly without hope.

Wait in hope.