Everybody Is Waiting

PresbyCan Daily Devotional

Genesis 25:20 – Isaac was forty years old when he took as his wife Rebekah daughter of Bethuel the Aramean from Paddan-aram and sister of Laban the Aramean. (CSB)
Forty years is a long time to wait to get married. It impresses and perplexes me that God would make a "Faith-Hall-of-Famer" wait that long for companionship and family building. I've read the book of Genesis many times and Isaac's age at marriage never stuck out to me until this time.
In popular culture today, it is a focal point of complaint that women are always waiting for their covenant relationship — but as I was reading today's verse, God humbled me and informed me that while women wait for their desire for a husband to be fulfilled, men of God are waiting, too!
As I read through Genesis, I saw that Abraham had to wait a hundred years for Isaac to be born. Then Isaac had to wait forty years for Rebekah, and twenty years after that for a set of twins: Esau and Jacob. Esau had to wait forty years to marry, while Jacob had to work and wait seven years to marry Rachel and Leah, due to local customs and a little bit of trickery on the part of his father-in-law.
It doesn't just stop at marriage when it comes to waiting on God's timing. The Hebrews had to wait four hundred years for freedom from slavery in Egypt. Millions of people had to wait hundreds or thousands of years for Jesus, the Messiah, to be born.
From these testimonies, we see that waiting is instilled in God's plan for all of us as believers. It strengthens our faith and tests our doubts so that we may grow to be more like Jesus.
Even if you are not waiting for marriage or to start a family, you can feel like you are waiting for God to tend to your medical diagnosis, your rowdy teenager, your overbearing boss, or even that red light on your way home from work.
So, the next time you have to wait for anyone or anything, remember that you are not the only one whom God makes to wait on Him and His promises. He makes us all wait from one year to forty years to a thousand years. That should give us comfort, because it is from waiting that His promises are best fulfilled. As Jesus has proven, God always keeps His promises, no matter how we act while we are waiting.
Prayer: Omnipresent God, please still our hearts while we wait for You to act in our lives. Give us Your work to do and Your people with whom to fellowship while we wait. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.