“How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?

    How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I wrestle with my thoughts

    and day after day have sorrow in my heart?

    How long will my enemy triumph over me?” Psalm 13:1-2, NIV

What are you waiting for? How long are you willing to wait for it?

Sometimes we wait in joyful anticipation and excitement; other times we wait in agony, barely hanging on.

“Patience is a virtue.” How are you doing with that one? Even David, “a man after God’s own heart” (1 Sam. 13:14), wrestled with this one in the Psalms.

As teachers and parents, we endeavor to teach our children to be patient, wait their turns, and expectantly trust that things will work out fine if they can calmly control their fleshly demand for being served or satisfied right away.

But let’s be honest: how well do we model this virtue for the children around us? I’ll admit that I fail on this one much more often than I’d like to. No one likes to wait.

Yet, God is never in a hurry, never pressured or swayed by our timetable or how many tantrums we throw while we wait. God proceeds with His perfect plan in His perfect timing, unworried and unhurried. And when we finally see how He’s got it all worked out, we wonder why in the world we ever doubted Him…until the next time we are challenged to wait.

We can find many examples of people waiting on a seemingly silent God in the Bible: Noah waited 40 days and 40 nights for the flood waters to recede. The ancient Israelites were in bondage to the Egyptians for 400 years while they waited to be delivered from the hand of Pharaoh. Then, they wandered in the desert for another 40 years before reaching the Promised Land. The intertestamental period–the time between the writing of the Old and New Testaments–is roughly 400 years. During this time, there was no new word from God. He had used His prophets to convey His promise of a Savior to them…and then they just had to wait in silence…FOR FOUR HUNDRED YEARS! Man, talk about a dry spell! Could your faith have withstood that kind of silence?

But does God’s apparent silence mean He is not still working? Obviously not.

Today, I’d like to invite you to keep patience in the forefront of your mind. Endeavor to be an example of godly patience today that makes the world stand up and take note. Be different. Be an example of supernatural patience and love today that reflects the spirit of the one you serve. Tomorrow there will be new challenges to patiently endure…or maybe the same ones. But either way, God asks us to rest in the assurance that He is God, and we are not “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).

Lord God, every day You give us an opportunity to trust You. Every day we have a chance to wait patiently on You and Your perfect timing and will, and all too often we struggle in this test of faith. Help us today to truly be at peace in the knowledge that You never fail and never forget us, that You have a plan working out in Your perfect timing even now. Help us to be content with Your timing. Help us also to extend patience to those around us, especially unbelievers, that we might bring glory to Your name and be a good testimony of Your longsuffering nature. Thank You, Lord, for always being so patient with ME. You are God; I am not. In Jesus’ name, I pray, Amen.

Copyright Rhapsody Jordan-Parisi.

Rhapsody is a Christian Educators member and high school English teacher from North Carolina. She is passionate about helping overwhelmed teachers reclaim their time and peace of mind through support, encouragement, and intentional strategies. You can connect with her at tightropeteaching.com.