To Wait for the Lord

The hidden work of faith in the time between promise and fulfillment

Waiting is one of the most misunderstood acts in the spiritual life. We imagine it as inactivity, as postponement, as something that happens when we cannot yet act. Scripture, however, presents waiting as one of the most concentrated forms of faith. To wait for the Lord is not to do nothing. It is to stand before God with one’s whole life exposed and entrusted to Him.

The Psalms give this posture its purest voice.

“My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning”

and again

“Wait for the Lord. Be strong and let your heart take courage. Wait for the Lord.”

The watchman does not sleep. He does not abandon his post. He does not force the dawn. He stands in the dark, alert and faithful, because he knows the morning will come. To wait in this way is already to believe that God is coming, even when nothing yet looks different.

This is why waiting is so painful. It places us in the space where we cannot save ourselves. We cannot produce what we long for. We cannot hurry God. All the defenses of the ego begin to collapse there. We are left with desire and vulnerability. St Isaac the Syrian says that hope is born in the furnace of affliction. It is not an idea but a wound that remains open toward God. Waiting keeps that wound from closing prematurely with false consolations or hurried solutions.

The Desert Fathers understood this deeply. Abba Moses said, “Sit in your cell and your cell will teach you everything.” The cell is the place of waiting. It is the place where nothing happens on the outside so that everything can be revealed on the inside. In the cell, one waits for God to come. One waits for prayer to be born. One waits for the heart to soften. The monk who flees the cell flees waiting, and in fleeing waiting he flees the slow work of God.

Abba Arsenius spoke even more starkly. “Flee, be silent, pray.” These were not techniques for spiritual success. They were a way of remaining under the hand of God without interference. To flee and to be silent is to step out of the compulsion to manage one’s life. To pray is to wait before God with one’s need. This is the ground where grace works.

Modern elders echo the same wisdom. St Paisios said that when God delays, He is not absent. He is preparing something greater in the soul than what we asked for. St. Sophrony of Essex taught that waiting before God in prayer is how the heart learns to carry eternity. When nothing seems to be happening, the deepest transformation is often taking place, not in circumstances but in the capacity of the soul to receive God.

Christ Himself entered into this mystery. The long hidden years in Nazareth were not a mistake or a delay. They were the fullness of obedience and waiting. He waited for the Father’s hour. He did not grasp. He did not hurry. Even in Gethsemane He waited, sweating blood as He entrusted Himself into the Father’s will. Redemption itself was born out of waiting.

To wait for the Lord, then, is to remain where He has placed you without bitterness, without resignation, and without self rescue. It is to let your need become prayer. It is to let time become an offering. It is to believe that God is working even when you cannot see how.