Wait on the Lord

This verse sounds calm on the page, yet David, who wrote it, was anything but calm, and the rest of the psalm shows you why.

He pictures an army camped around him: "Though an host should encamp against me." He has people lying about him: "false witnesses are risen up against me, and such as breathe out cruelty." He even imagines his own parents leaving him, the two people least likely to go: "When my father and my mother forsake me." And the one thing he says he really wants is not rescue from all of this. It is "that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life." That is the prayer of a man who has stopped bargaining for outcomes.

Halfway through the psalm his voice changes, and he begins to plead: "Hide not thy face far from me." So the command to wait comes from a man with everything at stake, talking himself out of doing something rash. That is why he says "wait" twice, with the heart in between: "he shall strengthen thine heart." The Hebrew can be heard as a promise or as a call to take courage, and either way the strength comes during the wait, before the waiting is over. The delay is where God builds the heart.

Waiting on the Lord does not mean doing nothing. This man is still praying and still seeking God's face while the lies spread. He has been lied about long enough to want it settled now, yet he keeps asking for that one thing. Perhaps a deadline is pressing on you today. Very often we set that deadline ourselves, so be careful what you are willing to give up to meet it.

Just before the last line, David tells you what kept him going: "I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living." He expected to see God's goodness here, in this life. You can expect it too. Wait on the Lord, and He will strengthen your heart.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 171 is When I Fall (Micah 7:8).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna