How to pray when you've been told to just wait

Someone said it to you again this week. Wait on the Lord. His timing is perfect. They meant it kindly and they may well be right, and you said thanks, and something in you went flat as they said it.

Because you have been waiting. That's the thing you've been doing. It's the only thing available to do. And the word wait, said to you like that, arrives as though you'd been failing to and are now being given the instruction. It also ends the conversation. Nobody says wait and then asks how it's going.

So you're carrying two things now. The silence itself — you've asked, nothing has come back, and you can't tell how long this goes on. And on top of it, the sense that waiting is the answer you've been given, and there's nothing further to say about it, and everyone else considers the matter handled.

Here's what doesn't get said.

That you don't know the difference between waiting and having stopped. From the inside they look identical. A person waiting on God and a person who has quietly given up both do the same thing — nothing. Both wake up, get on with the day, don't mention it. You can't tell which one you are any more, and you can't ask anyone, because the question sounds like a confession.

And there's a second one, quieter. You've started to suspect wait means no. That you're being managed. That the silence isn't a pause with something on the other side of it, it's just what it looks like, and the language of waiting is what you say to make an absence bearable. You won't say that to the person who told you to wait. You won't say it in a prayer either, because it sounds like the opposite of faith.

So the waiting goes on and none of what's inside it gets said to anybody, least of all to God.

There's a psalm for this, and it does not tell you to wait. It's a man doing it, out loud, with the silence still going.

Psalm 130. Eight verses. Nobody knows who wrote it. Here it is, whole.

Out of the depths I have cried to you, Yahweh. Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my petitions. If you, Yah, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you, therefore you are feared. I wait for Yahweh. My soul waits. I hope in his word. My soul longs for the Lord more than watchmen long for the morning; more than watchmen for the morning. Israel, hope in Yahweh, for with Yahweh there is loving kindness. With him is abundant redemption. He will redeem Israel from all their sins.

Start with where he's speaking from. Out of the depths I have cried to you. Not from a settled place. He is under it while he says this, and the first thing he asks is that God would hear him — let your ears be attentive. That request only gets made by someone who is not sure he's being heard. So this is a waiting psalm written from inside the same silence you're in. It is not written from the far side by someone who got his answer and is now recommending patience.

There are two verses here about sin, and they go past quickly. If you kept a record of sins, who could stand. But there is forgiveness with you. Whatever else that's doing, notice what it isn't doing — it isn't holding up the psalm. He doesn't stop to work out whether the silence is his fault. Two lines, and he's waiting again by verse five.

Now the part everyone quotes. My soul longs for the Lord more than watchmen long for the morning.

A watchman is on a wall in the dark. His night doesn't end because he's endured enough of it or held the right attitude. It ends when the sun comes up, and the sun is not his to summon. So the picture is not patience. It's a man scanning the horizon for something he cannot cause and cannot hurry, wanting it badly, with his eyes open in the dark. That's the difference you couldn't name. Waiting is not stillness. It's watching. The person who has given up has stopped looking at the horizon.

And notice what the watchman never does. He doesn't ask himself whether he's still watching properly, or whether he wants the morning as much as he did at midnight. That's been your whole problem — you've been trying to work out which one you are by looking inward, and it can't be done from in there. You check whether you still feel expectant. You don't much, and that frightens you, so you try to summon some, and then you can't tell whether what you summoned is faith or just effort. Then you check the effort. It goes on like that. You're asking the part of you that's gone flat whether it's gone flat.

He looks east instead. That settles it without ever asking it.

And look at what he waits for. I hope in his word. Not in the outcome. He is not waiting on the thing he asked for; he's waiting on God to speak. Which is precisely your position — the silence is the trouble, and a word is what's missing. It's also a man who hasn't concluded that wait means no. He wouldn't be watching if he had.

Then the end, and there's something honest to say about it. The last two verses turn away from God and speak to Israel. Hope in Yahweh, for with Yahweh there is loving kindness. And then a flat statement about what God will do — he will redeem Israel from all their sins. Nothing in this psalm says the answer arrived for him. He is still on the wall, and from there he makes a claim about God's character with nothing in his own hands to back it.

So here's the one thing tonight.

Tell God what you're watching for. Out loud, and specifically — not I'm waiting on you. Say the thing you're scanning the horizon for. A word. Any sense at all that you were heard. Name it.

Don't try to settle first whether you're still really waiting. You can't get at that from in there, and the watchman never asks. Just look, and say what you're looking for.

The morning may not come tonight. It didn't come inside this psalm either. What's different is that you're on the wall with your eyes open, and you've said so to the person the night belongs to.

The morning may not come tonight. It didn't come inside this psalm either. What's different is that you're on the wall with your eyes open, and you've said so to the person the night belongs to.

My soul longs for the Lord more than watchmen long for the morning; more than watchmen for the morning.

He said it twice. Still dark when the psalm ended.

I hope in his word.