This Advent season is an opportunity to pause and prepare our hearts and minds to experience God. Advent’s theme of waiting for the coming of Christ invites us to rest in God’s faithfulness to us now and reminds our hearts of His faithfulness in the past.
I don’t know about you, but waiting is a hard practice for me. By nature, I am impatient and active. The posture of waiting well doesn’t come naturally. I want to wait well with the Lord, to nestle into God’s presence and love and allow Him to comfort my soul. God wants to draw us near this season. He wants to give us comfort and strength.
Maybe this invitation is simply to posture ourselves for rest. To still ourselves and quiet our hearts, expecting to wait, not just to endure it, but to be renewed through it.
When I arrive at home at the end of a day, or on a Sunday afternoon, one of my unhurried practices is to put my phone in another room. On a recent Sunday afternoon, I walked away from my phone and spent some time unplugged, fluffing Christmas wreaths with my husband, Travis. It had only been a little over an hour when I sat down to send a brief “thinking of you” message to a friend.
The words I read on the phone screen were clear. The news they brought was devastating. Our dear loved one, so young, was diagnosed with cancer. I felt shocked, stunned in disbelief, with a sense of numbness. It was as though my mind couldn’t process the words I read. It was abrupt and overwhelming.
As my mind tried to comprehend the situation, my husband entered the room. Delivering the words aloud to him was surreal. We took a few moments to breathe. The ache in my heart was deep. My husband’s eyes reflected that same ache. The weight of this felt unbearable.
Have you ever been in a situation where waiting is difficult? Do the circumstances feel so unpleasant, painful, or distressing that you feel unable to tolerate or endure them?
In Psalm 31, David’s enemies plotted his demise and were after him. As I read this passage, I picture David with his back against the wall. The same way I feel when a situation is unbearable. David is desperate for God’s help. He knew his circumstances were distressing and beyond his ability to endure. He knew God saw him and would act on his behalf. David expressed his rest in God’s sovereignty,
“But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my God.’ My times are in your hand; rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from my persecutors!” (Psalm 31:14-15)
We understand that David was surrounded by his enemies and wrote this from a desperately overwhelming place. Maybe he too felt shocked, disbelief, and numbness as he looked around at his pursuers, but he came to the point that he reminded himself that his trust wasn’t in his circumstances; his trust was in the Lord. His time was in God’s hands.
May the Lord strengthen us when the suffering lasts long, or the hard situation comes suddenly, or the enemies seem so strong. We need the Lord’s help to remember our times are in His hands. Our God is good and hears our prayers for his help.
Charles Spurgeon described how, with enemies seeking his life, David used his best resource for grief. “He had no other refuge but that which he found in faith in the Lord his God…David had the grand resource of faith in the hour of danger.” Because of this, he said, “My times are in your hands.”
The great truth is this—all that concerns the believer is in the hands of the Almighty God. “My times”, these change and shift; but they change only in accordance with unchanging love, and they shift only according to the purpose of One with whom is no variableness nor shadow of a turning. “My times”, that is to say, my ups and my downs, my health and my sickness, my poverty and my wealth— all these are in the hand of the Lord, who arranges and appoints according to his holy will the length of my days, and the darkness of my nights. Storms and calms vary the seasons at the divine appointment. Whether times are reviving or depressing remains with him who is Lord both of time and of eternity; and we are glad it is so. (Charles Spurgeon, 1891)
We live in the “already but not yet” of Advent. The promises of the Messiah have been fulfilled with the birth of Jesus, and he is victorious over evil and death. Yet we wait for Jesus’s return, which will bring final judgment and the ultimate fulfillment of God’s promises. May we walk well and wait well as we are led by the Holy Spirit. The manner and duration of our times, every difficult circumstance, every hard and unbearable experience we have…are in His hands.
I came upon the words of this hymn that recent Sunday afternoon.
My times are in thy hand: My God, I wish them there;
My life, my friends, my soul I leave entirely to Thy care.
My times are in Thy hand; whatever they may be;
Pleasing or painful, dark or bright, as best may seem to Thee.
My times are in Thy hand; why should I doubt or fear?
My Father’s hand will never cause His child a needless tear.
My times are in Thy hand, Jesus the crucified!
Those hands my cruel sins had pierced are now my guard and guide.
My times are in Thy hand, I’ll always trust in Thee;
And, after death, at Thy right hand I shall forever be.
(William Freeman Lloyd,1824)
All that concerns us is in the hands of the Almighty Lord. Help us wait well, Lord.