Is Waiting "The Worst Thing Ever"? Reflections on Psalm 62
Psalm 62: For God alone my soul waits in silence | from him comes my salvation. 2 He alone is my rock and my salvation, | my fortress; I shall not be greatly shaken. 3 How long will all of you attack a man | to batter him, like a leaning wall, a tottering fence? 4 They only plan to thrust him down from his high position. They take pleasure in falsehood. | They bless with their mouths, but inwardly they curse. 5 For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, | for my hope is from him. 6 He only is my rock and my salvation, | my fortress; I shall not be shaken. 7 On God rests my salvation and my glory; | my mighty rock, my refuge is God. 8 Trust in him at all times, O people; | pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us. 9 Those of low estate are but a breath; | those of high estate are a delusion; in the balances they go up; | they are together lighter than a breath. 10 Put no trust in extortion; | set no vain hopes on robbery; if riches increase, set not your heart on them. 11 Once God has spoken; | twice have I heard this: that power belongs to God, 12 and that to you, O Lord, belongs steadfast love. For you will render to a man according to his work.
Guest Post: Lisa Carter
The COVID-19 crisis has shaken the world, and now we wait. Some of us wait for the day in the Fall when we feel safe to send our children to school. We wait to return to our jobs, if we still have one. Some wait for a stimulus or unemployment check. Others of us are waiting to gather with loved ones and families and our church family. We wait for the freedom to visit our favorite restaurants, coffee shops, and businesses. We wait for the services and interventions for our special needs children. We wait for surgeries or dental or medical appointments that are not deemed essential right now.
Others of us wait for test results. We wait for family members to recover. We wait to grieve the loss of a loved one within our community. We wait and wonder how many more will get the virus. How many more will die? How long the quarantine will last? We wait. Waiting is never easy. As Tom Petty sang, “waiting is the hardest part.”
It’s not our habit to wait. We are a culture of immediacy. With all our technological advancements, we’ve become a less patient people. Coupled with our Do-It-Yourself fixer-upper mentality, we find it hard to wait and depend on anyone or anything outside of our own control.
Spiritual Waiting
Spiritually, it’s also hard to wait. Dr. Larry Crabb writes, “It is not our habit to wait on a hidden God who is somehow working a masterful plan to bring glory to Himself.”
Even with plenty of things to keep us distracted, waiting can still be a scary and painful process. Yet, waiting is actually good for us all. To miss the goodness of waiting is to miss what waiting does to refine and grow us. There is always purpose in waiting. Abraham and Sarah waited 75 years for their promised son. Israel waited 420 years for deliverance from Egypt, then another 40 years before they could enter the Promised Land. God’s people waited generation after generation for the Messiah, and the church now awaits Christ’s return.
The question “How Long?” is a question that hovers over many of the Psalms.
In the waiting, here’s the key question: what does it look like to wait in a way that makes us a participant in what God is doing rather than someone who struggles against the wait and His purposes in it?
After all, we can be assured, as John Piper recently shared, that “the same sovereignty that could stop the coronavirus, yet doesn’t, is the very sovereignty that sustains the soul in it.” God could stop this pandemic at any time, but in His mysterious wisdom chooses to let us wait for His purposes. So how do we wait well?
A Biblical Resource for our Waiting
I believe that Psalm 62 can be an encouragement to us in the waiting.
This is a psalm attributed to David. Some scholars think that David wrote this psalm in the middle of facing the rebellion of his son, Absalom, though it’s not certain. Whatever the case, throughout his entire life David seemed to face formidable enemies whether it be Goliath, his own mentor Saul, his own son Absalom, the Philistines, and especially temptations from his own flesh and the sin within.
We cannot relate to many of the experiences David faced but we do have an enemy we are fighting right now as a nation. It’s an “invisible enemy” as people in our government have called it. Our enemy is COVID-19 which is life-threatening and threatening our very way of life, but we also face the enemies of our doubts and fears that attack our minds.
What does David do when he is surrounded by enemies as expressed in this psalm? He does something so counter-intuitive to us as modern Americans. He stops. He ceases action. He goes silent. He waits.
David’s Waiting
Right in the midst of all that is going on around him David begins with a calm composure and a silent waiting based on submission to his God (vs. 1: “For God alone my soul waits in silence”). He doesn’t grumble or complain or scheme but waits on the only source of hope that he knows. He says his waiting is in God alone.
Charles Spurgeon describes this kind of waiting as a possession of the soul until deliverance comes. He says to wait on God is worship. To wait in this posture is to give up the notion that we can do anything to save ourselves. It requires a kind of faith that nothing can shake us.
How could David silently wait instead of taking action or fretting, grumbling or complaining when enemies were upon him? And how do we sit and wait in submissive silence for deliverance in the midst of a global pandemic? To find the answer in this psalm, we must ask ourselves two questions:
Who do we Trust?
We wait quietly because of our trust in the One we wait upon. We can wait assuredly upon God because He is our rock (vs. 2, 6), our salvation (vs. 2, 6), our fortress (vs. 2, 6), our refuge (vs. 7, 8). He is all powerful (vs. 11) and possesses steadfast love (vs. 11).
We put our trust in Him because He alone is our greatest hope and the only perfectly trustworthy one. Our ultimate hope in the waiting is not in our own plans, our googled information, our government, our medical experts, our economists, or even our first responders as important as these institutions and people may be. Our hope is in our Sovereign Loving God and it ought to be Him that we wait upon for our salvation and deliverance. He alone is the only one who can deliver from us from any enemy.
This leads us to another question that begs to be asked: are we waiting for everything to go back to the way things were? Are we waiting for health, ease, comfort, and peace? What are we waiting for?
What do we wait for? What do we hope for?
There is something at the end of our waiting. Most people feel that waiting is meaningless without an end result. Right now, we wait for an end to a global pandemic.
Yet, as we look to the counsel of Scripture, it appears that the process of waiting is as important as the end result to God.
As Paul Tripp puts it, “waiting is not about what you get at the end; it’s about what you become as you wait.” Or, as Jade Mazarin writes: “Something actually happens while nothing is happening. God uses waiting to change us.”
From the whole counsel of God’s Word, we know God’s ultimate purpose is that God be enjoyed and glorified in and through us. Paul writes: “It is my eager expectation and hope that…Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death” (Phil. 1:20)
Waiting is a tool of God to shape and mold and refine us into vessels of His mercy if we submit to Him through the process. We exist for God’s glory, not our own comfort and ease. Paul Tripp writes, “The whole redemptive story is written for one purpose and one purpose alone: the glory of the king.” Tripp believes that the reason that waiting is so hard is “because we tie our hearts to other glories.”
In Psalm 62, David points out man’s attachment to the glories of riches and power. God often strips us of our glories in our seasons of waiting. Waiting requires us to surrender to His glory.
Since we live in a fallen and broken world, it is inevitable that we wait. You will often find yourself in a “season of waiting”. In the waiting, will you build bigger and more solid bridges of trust in God? Will you surrender more fully to a Sovereign God who continues to possess perfect steadfast love even in the midst of a global pandemic?
Will you use your season of waiting to trust more fully in God alone?