When Waiting Draws Us Near to God

The silence felt comfortable at first, not unlike the typical pause between the congregational singing and our pastor taking the stage. As the silence lingered, though, I began to squirm in my seat and wonder what to do while we waited.

For the first eight months of the year, our pastor had preached chronologically through the Old Testament. We had spent weeks wrestling through difficult passages from the prophets during the exile and return to Jerusalem. I was thrilled this Sunday to finally feel the relief of the Gospels’ fulfillment.

My relief, however, was delayed. 

After the band and praise team left the stage, our worship pastor reminded the congregation about the four hundred years of silence between the Old and New Testaments. Between the last words of the prophet Malachi and the angel of the Lord appearing to Zechariah, the people yearned for a word from God. They prayed and offered sacrifices, longing for him to fulfill his promises.

To remember the agony of waiting for God to speak, the worship pastor told us we would sit in four hundred seconds of silence.

6:40, 6:39, 6:38 . . .

I watched the clock on the screen, counting down the seconds until the silence would be broken. I imagined the people of Israel crying out for answers, wondering why God remained silent, and I thought, I’ve been there, too.

The day my mom was diagnosed with advanced-stage cancer while I was pregnant with our first child. Will my mom get to hold her first grandchild? I asked God. No answer.

The year we were told our adoption process would be delayed, and we lost a baby to miscarriage. God, do you not want us to have another child? No answer.

The months when we fearfully quarantined in our homes—worried about my pregnancy, my husband’s job, and the world’s uncertainty. How long will this last, Lord? No answer.

I cried out in my waiting, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” (Ps. 13:1).

4:26, 4:25, 4:24 . . .

Our world seems allergic to waiting. We pay hundreds of dollars for faster shipping, want our entertainment on demand, and expect Google to instantly answer our questions.

This culture of instant gratification can seep into our spiritual lives. We expect God to provide for our needs in two days or less, download wisdom into our minds when we ask, and immediately relieve us from any suffering or struggle.

We live in an impatient world, so we believe that any season of waiting is bad for us. It must mean God is withholding his best from us or, even worse, withholding himself.

Yet when we look at God’s story of redemption, we see waiting can be a blessing in God’s economy. Abraham waited for the promised son. The Israelites waited to be delivered from Egypt, then waited again to enter the Promised Land. David waited to be crowned king. Time and again, God wove waiting into the story of his people in order to draw them closer to him.

Maybe waiting is not God withholding himself from us, but God revealing himself in a way we could never understand if we weren’t still and silent.

2:01, 2:00, 1:59 . . .

In one of my hardest seasons of waiting, I turned to Scripture looking for hope. I resonated with the prophet Jeremiah’s lament of Israel’s suffering. Like Jeremiah, I had lost hope, wondered what God was doing, and struggled with depression. Nothing made sense, and all I wanted to do was weep.

Yet in the middle of a book about grief, Jeremiah interrupts his lament, “But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope” (Lam. 3:21). Amid his sorrow, Jeremiah reminded himself and Israel (and his modern-day readers) that this suffering is not all there is. He turned his mind, and subsequently his heart, back to the hope of God.

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him’” (Lam. 3:22–24).

Jeremiah chose to hope in God, not despite his grief but throughout his grief. He knew that in the waiting, God was with him. His hope was not in understanding the why or how long but in trusting in the one who was loving, merciful, and faithful—even in the silence.

Jeremiah chose to wait, to hope, even when he didn’t yet have the answer. “It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord” (Lam. 3:26). Waiting doesn’t have to be wasted. It is a good opportunity to press deeper into the steadfast love and mercy of God.

We can journal our prayers—even the questions that feel unanswered—and then revisit them months later to see how God has been at work. We can pray the Psalms of lament to give voice to our sorrows while anchoring ourselves in truth. We can intentionally incorporate moments of silence and meditation into our routine to point our hearts and minds back to God. When God feels silent, we can lean into practices that remind us of his presence in the waiting.

0:30, 0:29, 0:28 . . .

The congregation waited quietly and held our breath as a woman stepped out from the wings of the stage and lifted a microphone to her lips:

“Come Thou long expected Jesus, born to set Thy people free;

From our fears and sins release us, let us find our rest in Thee.

Israel’s strength and consolation, hope of all the earth Thou art;

Dear desire of every nation, joy of every longing heart.”

My heart burst with longing as I resonated deeply with this beloved hymn. For six minutes, I sat in uncomfortable silence, but it helped me remember past seasons when I sat waiting for God’s voice—for God to answer the cries of my heart, for God to fulfill the promises to his people.

God’s silence ended with the arrival of Immanuel—God with us. Jesus answers our prayers and longings by drawing near.

When the clock hit 0:00, tears dripped down my cheeks. Those four hundred seconds reminded me that even when God seems silent, he is still with us in the waiting.

Every silence reminds us that our true hope isn’t in the quick resolution of our circumstances but in the faithful presence of Jesus. One day, all our waiting will end when Christ returns to make all things new.

Until then, we wait with hope, not because we know when or how God will answer, but because we know he is with us. Even in the silence, we are never alone—Immanuel, God with us, is our hope.