What Lent Teaches Us About Waiting

This Week’s Reading: 

The Lord is good to those who wait for him,
to the soul who seeks him.
It is good that one should wait quietly
for the salvation of the Lord. 

– Lamentations 3:25–26 

Reflection: 

These words in the book of Lamentations were written in the devastating aftermath of the fall of Jerusalem. Everything familiar was gone. The writer was not sitting in comfort, reflecting on abstract patience. He was surrounded by loss, uncertainty, and unanswered questions. And yet he makes this startling claim: it is good to wait.  

This Lent, waiting has not been theoretical for me. I am waiting for my mom to die. 

Those words take my breath away. This season has put us on a rollercoaster as my mom ebbs and flows from being relatively okay one moment to sliding into major decline the next. There are moments when she’s aware, alert, and the most precious conversations are had. Still, there are other moments where all I can do is pray for her comfort. I strum my guitar and sing over her, my voice catching with emotion. I sit beside her, adjust pillows, and listen to the rhythm of her breathing. There, in the quiet spaces between those breaths, I wait. 

The end of life has a way of stretching time. Days blur. Nights feel endless. You live suspended between “not yet” and “any moment now.” There is no calendar date you can circle. There is no certainty. Just watching. Listening. Wondering. 

Waiting for someone you love to pass ushers in a strange, holy ache. You grieve while they are still here. You hope for relief for them while dreading what that relief will mean for you. You want the suffering to end, yet you are not quite ready for the ending. 

At the same time, I am learning that there is beauty in the waiting. It’s a gift to have the opportunity to love someone into eternity. I don’t want to take these moments for granted. This season is sacrifice. It can be disorienting. It’s painful yet productive.

Waiting Dismantles Our Illusion of Control

Waiting strips away any illusion of control. It illuminates my fragile limitations and reminds me of my utter dependency on Christ.  

I have spent so much of my life trying to move things forward, solve problems, and create outcomes. Waiting challenges me because it exposes my limits. It confronts me with the truth that there are things I simply can’t fix, accelerate, or escape. 

Lent intentionally beckons me to rest in that uncomfortable space.  

Lent is a season teetering between promise and fulfillment, between sorrow and resurrection, between the acknowledgment of death and the certainty of life. Lent does not rush me to Easter. It invites me to sit in the quiet, in the ache, in the unfinished places of my own story. 

I admit that is often the last place I want to be, yet that is where God ministers to my heart.  

Waiting is Not the Absence of God’s Work 

I am learning that waiting is not the absence of God’s work. It is the place where His deepest work in me unfolds. 

In waiting, God loosens my grip on outcomes. He teaches me to trust His character instead of my own timelines. He forms endurance in me—not brittle endurance fueled by my own striving, but the steady endurance of Jesus-rooted hope. 

Waiting exposes what I really believe. Do I trust God only when He moves quickly? When prayers are answered the way I hoped? Or do I trust Him even when He seems silent? Do I merely believe IN Him, or do I really BELIEVE Him?  

Lent reminds me that faith is not proven in speed, but in surrender. 

The cross itself was an exercise in waiting. The disciples waited in confusion. They waited in grief. They waited without understanding that resurrection was already unfolding beyond their sight. I recognize myself in them. 

I want clarity. I want relief. I want resolution. But Lent slows me down long enough to see that waiting is not meaningless delay. It is sacred formation. 

God does not waste the waiting. He uses it to grow me. To strengthen what feels weak. To teach me that my hope was never in my ability to push through, manage outcomes, or hold everything together. My hope is in His faithfulness to meet me exactly where I am. Even here. Especially here.  

And perhaps that is why Scripture dares to say waiting can be good: 

Not because it is easy.
Not because it is painless.
But because God is always present in it.  

Questions to Consider: 

• In what areas of your life are you being asked to wait? 

• What emotions surface in you when nothing seems to be changing? 

• What are you tempted to control, fix, or force instead of trusting God? 

• How might waiting be forming something in you that immediate answers could not? 

• What steps can you take today to surrender the future outcome of your circumstances to the Lord? 

Closing Prayer: 

Lord, thank you for Your constant presence. Waiting is hard. It uncovers my fear, my impatience, and my longing for certainty. I often yearn for answers, relief, and resolution instead of the good and steady work of sanctification. Forgive me when I grow impatient and seek to take things into my own hands.

Teach me to surrender the unfinished places of my life completely to You. Help me to wait without despair, to be still without hardening my heart, and to move forward with unwavering hope in Your steadfast love for me. Use this season to refine my faith, soften my heart, and draw me closer to You. Fill me with Your peace in the unknown. I love and trust You. Amen.