Prayer To Wait Patiently For God Knowing He Will Do Something Good

 We are all waiting for restrictions to lift completely and for the opportunity to get back to what we would each call normal living.  We want to get out of our houses and go to places this summer, enjoy the outdoors, maybe be part of a concert or summer fair. Who knows what will be allowed in the next few months? Wouldn’t it be nice to see people smile again instead of having their smile hidden behind their mask?  

All we know at the moment is that more and more people are being vaccinated and as those numbers increase we get closer to that herd immunity that sends the virus packing from our communities.  There is growing optimism that we are in the final season of the pandemic. 

At the same time, at least locally here in Canada, we see case numbers rising and larger and larger percentages of those cases being of the virus variants that are more infectious.  Are we in a third wave?  What will that wave look like?  There have been some dire predictions that it could be worse than numbers we’ve seen in the two previous waves.  And so we wait and watch.

This scenario has reminded me a bit of how we see all of time and eternity.  In our world we have so much evident of moral decline and people refusing to accept the reality of God as they choose to make their own decisions about beginning and end of life and behaviours in between.  I think about the ancient Catholic list of 7 deadly sins and the evidence of these things being not just practiced but held up is astonishingly clear.

Pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed, laziness. What do these look like in 2021 society? PRIDE: Believing we should put ourselves first no matter the harm to others, GREED:  consuming whatever we want no matter the debt or consequences; ENVY: Wishing we had more because we don’t have what someone else has; LUST: exposing ourselves to sexually immoral content and participating in sexually inappropriate relationships; WRATH/ANGER: communicating with hatred and vitriol whether in person or social media; GLUTTONY: living for as much pleasure as we can get and believing we have the right to whatever behaviour and lifestyles brings that to us; and LAZINESS: doing only what we feel like doing when we feel like doing it.  Seems pretty clear to me that these deadly sins define life in 2021, wouldn’t you say?.

And yet, in the middle of the mess, as people of God, we need to be those who are confident that we will live to see the Lord’s goodness in our own lives as well as beyond the grave in eternity.  We need to wait with God, with courageous and dedicated hearts, trusting that our lives in God’s hand are carrying out God’s good purposes that will ultimately succeed no matter how dark things seem to be today.

Yet I am confident I will see the Lord’s goodness while I am here in the land of the living.  Wait patiently for the lord.  Be brave and courageous.  Yes, wait patiently for the Lord.  Psalm 27:13-14

God is good.  God is working for good in all things.  God is working in us to transform us into people who are and do good through the power of the Holy Spirit.  He’s doing it in the middle of our broken world where people all around us are making choices that go against His good will, with media blasting our messages inviting us to join them.

We used to read the Amplified Bible before many of the modern translations were put in print.  I think it does a really good job of showing us God’s goodness at work in us that can lift up our confidence today as we wait:

It is [not your strength, but it is] God who is effectively at work in you, both to will and to work [that is, strengthening, energizing, and creating in you the longing and the ability to fulfill your purpose] for His good pleasure. Philippians 2:13

Oh Lord, we are so grateful that we don’t live in this day simply by what we see and experience.  How discouraging and meaningless that would be.  We’re so glad to know that You are working out Your purposes and You will prevail both in our lives and in history. 

We have Your sworn promise:

The Lord Almighty has sworn, “Surely, as I have planned, so it will be, and as I have purposed, so it will happen.”  Isaiah 14:24

We have the Lord Jesus who gave His life so we could be made whole and have life with You forever.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.  John 3:16

Lord today we want to live in the confidence that we will see Your goodness no matter how challenging and frustrating we find our present experience and circumstances.  While we wait for this pandemic to clear, for case numbers to go down, and for restrictions to be lifted, we pray for patience, for courage, for perseverance to keep on trusting You and keep on doing the good things that You have planned for us, one day at a time.

Yet I am confident I will see the Lord’s goodness while I am here in the land of the living.  Wait patiently for the lord.  Be brave and courageous.  Yes, wait patiently for the Lord.  Psalm 27:13-14