“Good things come to those who wait.”
I grew up hearing this slogan on Heinz ketchup commercials. And while I would agree that there is no better ketchup to pair with a french fry, sometimes waiting for that ketchup to crawl out of a glass bottle was painful. So much so, that many times my fries were gone before the ketchup arrived.
An Instant World
Waiting can be hard. I don’t think it comes naturally to humans. All you have to do is watch someone in any form of long, slow line to know this is true.
So many of the conveniences we enjoy are designed to be immediately available.
Potatoes can be instant.
Movies can be on-demand.
You can pay more to drive in the express lane or skip the line at an amusement park.
I don’t know what I would do without a microwave.
Even ketchup, which was supposedly good for those who waited, is now instantly squeezable.
These aren’t bad things. In fact, they are great!
But after getting used to things being immediate, we can bring those same expectations to things that are meant to be slower. Our expectation of instantaneous results can get in the way.
All that said, it appears that the Lord thinks waiting is good, especially waiting on Him.
Jeremiah tells us, “The Lord is good unto them that wait for him” (Lamentations 3:25).
What does it mean to wait for the Lord? And why is it a good thing?
More Than Patience
Robert D. Hales taught, “In the scriptures, the word wait means to hope, to anticipate, and to trust. To hope and trust in the Lord requires faith, patience, humility, meekness, long-suffering, keeping the commandments, and enduring to the end.”1
Waiting for and on the Lord is about more than patience, although patience can certainly come from waiting.
To wait is to hope.
To anticipate.
To trust.
Waiting is about understanding that His “thoughts are not [our] thoughts”.2
A key to waiting is understanding that God sees things from the beginning to the end. We need to trust that as He answers our prayers or gives a promised blessing, He knows not only what we need, but when we need it.
Dallin H. Oaks taught:
“The first principle of the gospel is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith means trust—trust in God’s will, trust in His way of doing things, and trust in His timetable. We should not try to impose our timetable on His . . . Indeed, we cannot have true faith in the Lord without also having complete trust in the Lord’s will and in the Lord’s timing.”3
The Sacred Space Between
Waiting can be sacred time.
Tracy Y. Browning taught:
“The Lord’s method of teaching is ‘line upon line, precept upon precept.’ We may be required to ‘wait upon the Lord’ in the space between our current line of understanding and the next yet to be delivered. This sacred space can be a place where our greatest spiritual conditioning can occur—the site where we can ‘bear with patience’ our earnest seeking and renew our strength to continue to keep the sacred promises we have made to God through covenant.”4
I love the idea that the space between now and later can be a period of growth and refinement.
The space between our prayer and the answer.
Between the promise and its fulfillment.
Between what we understand now and what the Lord will eventually help us understand.
We may want to get through that space as quickly as possible. But perhaps the Lord knows there are things that can happen to us there that cannot happen anywhere else.
Waiting upon the Lord can change us. And sometimes that change is a shift in our perspective.
A Higher View
There is a promise that comes with waiting upon the Lord. Remember, the Lord is good to those who wait for Him.
Isaiah explains that promise:
“But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31).
Why eagles?
Eagles and other soaring birds have been observed at heights of more than 20,000 feet.5 That means an eagle could potentially be flying higher than many of the mountains in the Rockies. Mount Elbert, Colorado’s highest summit, is 14,440 feet. An eagle at 20,000 feet would be more than a mile above its summit.
Few creatures can gain a higher, more expansive perspective.
I believe that is what Isaiah is trying to teach us.
If we wait in that sacred space between our expectations and God’s blessings, trusting the Lord and His timing, we will not simply emerge with the thing we were waiting for. We will emerge changed.
Our character will have been strengthened.
We may begin to see things we simply could not see from below.
Our perspective will be higher and more expansive than it was before.
And it will be good that we waited.
Grounded and Reaching High
- Main idea: Waiting upon the Lord is not passive delay. It is sacred time to grow in faith, trust His timing, and gain a higher, broader spiritual perspective.
- Practical takeaway: When answers or blessings seem delayed, resist forcing the timetable. Keep trusting that God sees what you cannot yet see.
- One question to ponder: What might the Lord be helping you become, understand, or see differently as you remain in the sacred space of waiting on Him?
Lead image generated by Gemini AI
- Robert D. Hales, “Waiting upon the Lord: Thy Will Be Done”, General Conference, October 2011
- see Isaiah 55:8
- Dallin H. Oaks, “Timing“, BYU Devotional, January 29, 2002
- Tracy Y. Browning, “Seeking Answers to Spiritual Questions“, General Conference, October 2024
- see “Wings as Eagles“, New Era, July 2015
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