A Prayer for Patience
But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.
— Isaiah 40:31
I am not, by nature, a patient woman. I plant a seed and go back the next morning to check. I pray a prayer and start looking for the answer before the amen is cold. I suspect most of us are like that — wired for results, uncomfortable with the in-between, allergic to the word wait. But the waiting is where most of the living happens, if we're honest. The waiting room, the waiting season, the years between the prayer and the answer. God does not seem to be in any hurry, and that is one of the hardest things about him. He is thorough where we'd settle for fast. He is patient where we'd settle for done.
Lord, I am tired of waiting.
I have been patient — or I've tried to be — and I don't see any change yet, and I'm running low on the faith it takes to keep standing here.
Teach me to wait the way you wait — not anxiously, not with clenched teeth, but with the steadiness of someone who knows the outcome is already held.
Help me trust your timing when it makes no sense to me.
Help me stop trying to force open doors you haven't opened yet.
Renew my strength while I wait. Not after the waiting — during it. Right here, in the middle of the in-between.
I believe the answer is coming. Help my unbelief.
Amen.
The garden has taught me more about patience than any sermon ever did. A tomato will not ripen one day faster because I stare at it. A perennial won't bloom its first year no matter how much I want it to. And every spring I plant something new and every spring I have to learn the same lesson over again: that the growing happens underground first, where I can't see it, and the visible part comes last. It's the same with prayer. The answer is forming in the dark, in the soil, in the place we can't reach. Our job isn't to dig it up. Our job is to keep watering and trust the gardener.
For the waiting seasons. Ruby writes a short devotional every morning — one verse, and a few steady words for the long middle. You can subscribe — it's free, or stay a while and read more of her writing.
When patience is what's required, Ruby has been there too: