There are lists on the internet of concerning behaviours to watch for in your children. I remember finding one of these lists, after I learned that one of my kids had begun eating lunch—not in the canteen, but in the library by himself.
My heart began pounding as I read the list, recognising one after another behaviour in my child. This experience sounded an alarm for me, and I immediately rolled up my sleeves and got busy.
I made calls, I read books, and I got help. Most importantly, I got on my knees and started crying out to God.
Over the coming months, one of the ways we supported our child was by moving him to a small Christian school. This made an immediate difference and we were so pleased! It felt like we had skipped to the good part of the story.
But a few months later, I stopped at the new school to drop off a lunch and was directed to the canteen, where I asked one of the students if she had seen my son. She said, “Oh, he always eats lunch in the library.”
My heart sank. Storm clouds seemed to instantly gather over my family and dread filled my heart. It was heartbreaking to learn about my child’s repeated pattern of isolation, but it was doubly terrifying because I had already tried everything I knew to do. God was asking me to wait on Him.
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The Stretch Between
God’s people have always been a waiting people. Can you think of any time in the Bible when God’s people weren’t waiting on Him for something? Even now, we’re waiting on Jesus to return and rule over the new earth. Our waiting is prompted by God’s promises.
I like to think of God’s promises as a set of parentheses or brackets. The first parenthesis opens when He makes a promise and the second closes when He keeps it. Like parentheses, you never have one without the other. When God makes a promise, you know He’s going to keep it. Yet, there’s often a much longer stretch between the two than we first imagine.
Why, God? Why make a promise and wait so long to keep it? Why not skip to the good part?
Think of Abraham and Sarah’s story. In Genesis 12, God introduces himself to them with a set of lavish promises, including one that surely made Sarah’s heart sing: After experiencing the devastation infertility (11:30), God was promising to turn Sarah’s family of two into a nation (12:2)!
When Sarah packed up and moved to the promised land, I imagine she expected to get pregnant on the way. They’d arrive and settle in, Abraham would build a house, and they’d start filling it with kids. But when they arrived, surprisingly there were people already living there, acting liked they owned the place (v. 6). Months went by, then years, then decades. Twenty-four years later, they were still living in tents. And there was still no baby.
As I watch the parentheses widen in Sarah’s story, I wonder, Why, God? Why make a promise and wait so long to keep it? Why not skip to the good part?
The Good Part
We, the people of God, love His promises, but we don’t like the wait. This is particularly true of our generation. We’re the Amazon-next-day-delivery generation. We’d rather skip the stretch of waiting and get to the good part!
Do we notice how long the people of God waited? And do we expect long stretches of waiting between the parentheses in our own stories?
This is reflected even in the way we tell the overarching story of the Bible. Have you ever noticed the way we skip from sin to the Saviour, all in the same song? Or all in the same sentence? But in my Bible, there’s about an inch of pages which represent thousands of years between the time God first promises a Saviour (Genesis 3:15) and the time Jesus dies on the cross (Matthew 27).
We wouldn’t tear these pages out, but do we notice how long the people of God waited? And do we expect long stretches of waiting between the parentheses in our own stories?
Most often, I want to skip to the good part, where I can celebrate God’s faithfulness to keep His promises. Yet, as I’ve studied Sarah’s story and looked back on my own, I’ve come to see that the stretch between the parentheses is one of the good parts.
Worth the Wait
Unlike Sarah, I don’t have particular promises about my family. When I misappropriate promises meant for other people on other points on the timeline, it only leads to disillusionment and disappointment with God.
You and I are not promised a life without trouble (John 16:33), but there are plenty of God’s promises that do belong to us! For instance, here are some that I clung to in my long stretch of waiting:
- God hears our cries (Matthew 7:7–11).
- God will never leave us (Hebrews 13:5).
- God blots out our sins (Romans 4:7)—even the ones that contribute to our struggles.
- God loves us and always will (Romans 8:39).
Faithfulness can’t be demonstrated in a minute; it is only demonstrated
over time. This is true in marriages, in friendships, and in our relationship with God. That stretch between the parentheses—the waiting—is one of the good parts, because it’s over time that we learn of God’s faithfulness.
God wants us to feel the hug of His closing parentheses, when after 25 years, “The Lord did for Sarah what he had promised” (Genesis 21:1). He wants us to find security in His faithfulness, when after we turn that inch-worth of Bible pages, we’re told, “A savior has been born to you!” (Luke 2:11).
Shaped by God’s Promises
That day in the canteen was more than a decade ago, and I praise God for the miraculous ways He has parted the storm clouds and brought healing, as well as for that time of waiting on Him.
What are you waiting on God for? What situation makes you ache to skip to the good part? Maybe you, too, have a child who’s struggling. Or maybe you’re enduring chronic pain or extensive infertility. Maybe you’ve asked God for years to lift a financial burden or heal a broken relationship.
Parents, your wait between the parentheses is one of the good parts because it’s here that God shows himself faithful. It’s in the waiting that you’re being shaped by God’s promises.
