It deserves a good Google when you get a chance, as to when punctuation marks were invented, but at the time that the Old Testament in our Bibles was written, there were no exclamation marks! Crazy, huh!?
One way writers could emphasize things was to repeat essential phrases. Psalm 130:5-6 is an excellent example of this.
Psalm 130:5-6
5 I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
6 my soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen for the morning,
more than watchmen for the morning.
The writer repeats "waiting for the Lord” twice and “more than watchmen for the morning” to emphasize how important those phrases are. It is a way to show their importance without exclamation marks.
Immediately, I thought of two scenarios when I read those words. They shed light on our own hearts as we seek to wait on God. I will confess right off that waiting on anything is not my strong suit. Because of that, I meditate often on the Psalms and God’s clear call to trust Him and wait while trusting Him. When we are waiting on God, we are waiting for Him to speak, comfort, counsel, or just be present with us. Waiting on God in the Bible is a picture of us yearning to be close to Him.
Scene 1: My kids are both excellent sleepers, and when they were small, they’d sleep through the night most nights. We have friends in Michigan who had a son who woke up early every day. He would then wake up his little brother, who needed his rest to have a good day. These parents were smart, though, and they found an alarm clock… not one to wake the boys, but it was set up like a traffic light. Red meant to stay in bed, yellow meant it was almost time to get out of bed, and green meant go! This boy would wait in bed with anticipation for the light to go green so that he could launch out of bed and start the day. This story highlights the joy with which we should wait for God. Remember that waiting on a loving, joyful, personal God is not like waiting for the principal to come into the room when you are in trouble. Waiting on God should be like us waiting for the best part of our day, and not being able to contain ourselves as we get ready to enjoy God’s presence in our lives. Our motivation for waiting is not passive, but it should be waiting with anticipation for the ultimate joy of our souls.
Scene 2: Put yourselves in the shoes of ancient watchmen: no radar, no flashlights, no spotlights, and no electronic surveillance of any kind. Whether you were patrolling the edge of a camp or the walls of a city, you were watching for a reason. There was always the threat of attack. Wild animals could come after your livestock or enemy soldiers could be ready to raid your grain. An army could be preparing for an attack in the early morning, and you had little chance at all of seeing them with nothing more than some torches for light. For any of you who have camped outside, especially in unfamiliar territory, you know that sounds in the night are not always as identifiable as we would like them to be. Consider, too, that the watchmen are also always on the defensive. Any attacker coming has a plan or strategy, and even something as simple as knowing when and where to attack is a huge advantage. The watchmen just have to be ready at all times. There is an intensity to this picture of waiting that we need to let work on our souls. I have had to pull all-nighters in college and also to take care of my kids when they are sick. However, there were only two times I can remember staying up all night with anything close to this level of intensity. Once, when my wife and I were living in Wichita, we had a trifecta of bad circumstances. There was a shooting across town where the person was not arrested right away, a seemingly unrelated shooting that we heard in our neighborhood, and a late-night loud knock on our door. Needless to say, I stayed up that night out of concern for our safety. On a less serious note, we were once living in the country, and there was a tornado watch in our area. I remember staying up well into the night until the radio said we were in the clear. In both of those cases, though, I had news channels, outside lights on my house, street lights, a cell phone to call the police, and so many options to stay safe. Imagine that ancient watchmen who would feel this overwhelming relief as the sun came fully up, all the shadows were gone, and the field around their zone was empty except for some deer or cows eating grass.
There is not one picture that captures waiting on God, so following the Psalmist's lead, I gave you two. There is an intensity and an anticipation as we wait for God to show up in our lives. It is not a passive waiting, but active, and we should react with relief and joy when He shows up for us. God loves being near to each of us. If you don’t feel close to Him, invite Him to come near to you. It's often our hearts, whether crusty or distracted, that are in the way of our knowing how close God is to us. Often, our waiting on Him is waiting for us to know and confess our distance from Him. Isaiah 30:18 highlights that God is waiting on us just like we are waiting on Him.
Isaiah 30:18
18 Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you,
and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you.
For the Lord is a God of justice;
blessed are all those who wait for him.
There is nothing worth pursuing more than nearness with God
There is nothing worth pursuing more than nearness with God
- Pastor Will