God has so many blessings and plans for us, but there’s a time for them all. We’re not going to get them all right now. In Ecclesiastes we’re told that ‘there is a time for everything’ (3:1 NIV). God made people wait many times throughout the Bible. Abraham and Sarah had to wait for a son, Joseph had to go through many bad situations before it was the right time to be given authority in Egypt, Jesus had to wait 30 years to begin His ministry, Simeon was waiting for God’s salvation, and those who had been exiled by the Babylonians were waiting for freedom. For many of these people, the wait wasn’t a few weeks or months, it was years and years. For the exiles, it was 70 years. In Jeremiah 29, we read: ‘This is what the Lord says: “Babylon will be powerful for seventy years. After that time I will come to you, and I will keep my promise to bring you back to Jerusalem”’ (v.10 NCV). Often we want God to act and change our situations, to bring good times, immediately. But God’s timing is better than ours. He knows when it’s the right time to bring change and blessing. Psalm 102 also shows us that God had an appointed time for the exiles: ‘You will arise and have compassion on Zion, for it is time to show favour to her; the appointed time has come.’ God’s got an appointed time to come through for us too. Waiting can be hard, especially if we’ve been waiting a really long time. We can end up getting frustrated and disappointed, we might even be tempted to think that God’s forgotten and abandoned us. But while we’re waiting for this appointed time, He’s working.

What Now?

If you’re waiting on God for something, write out Psalm 27:14 and read it whenever the waiting gets tough.