Hoping and Waiting

 Hoping and Waiting

April 15, 2025

Psalms 31:23-24

23 O love the LORD, all you His godly ones!

The LORD preserves the faithful

And fully recompenses the proud doer.

24 Be strong and let your heart take courage,

All you who hope in the LORD.

Psalms 42:1-5

1 As the deer pants for the water brooks,

So my soul pants for You, O God.

2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God;

When shall I come and appear before God?

3 My tears have been my food day and night,

While they say to me all day long, “Where is your God?”

4 These things I remember and I pour out my soul within me.

For I used to go along with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God,

With the voice of joy and thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.

5 Why are you in despair, O my soul?

And why have you become disturbed within me?

Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him

For the help of His presence.

Hope here in the Psalms can also be translated as wait. So hoping and waiting are related. This is not exactly like the old Buddy Holly rock and roll tune “Crying, waiting, hoping”. He was singing about a girlfriend that had left him and there was no real basis for him to hope that she would return. When we wait in the Lord, that is a different matter as that hope has a basis. Our God is a loving Father who will reward our hope. When we are strong and courageous, we have hope that the Lord will be on our side and vanquish the despair. We can cry in he night but we have hope that the new day will bring joy and we shall yet again praise Him. When we wait in the Lord and seek Him like the deer pants for the water brook, we have an expectation that He will come save us, That is a true hope. We take encouragement from the psalmist who teaches us to sing and praise the Lord, even in our despair. By encouraging ourselves in the Lord, we build up that hope, and hope becomes faith, which is the reality of things yet unseen, but in which we have the assurance that they will be. So take heart and wait in the Lord, hope in the Lord and expect to see His deliverance from all you problems.