" The Lord is good unto them that wait for him." ― Lamentations 3:25.
This modest text is supported by a bolder and more eloquent one in Isaiah. " Men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him." Those that waited for the Messiah, and at length beheld him, found the promise of these texts verified in their experience.
But we have not in this dispensation bid farewell to the attitude of waiting. The great and precious things bestowed upon us, do not hinder our aspirations after more transcending things to come. Faith wrestles. Faith also waits. Some have faith to wrestle; but not to wait.
This waiting implies an unconquerable conviction that the manifestations of goodness which we have asked of God, he will grant in some more fitting time than the present, and after full-proof of our faith. It is immensely difficult for faith to endure, if the season be protracted. For day after day comes and goes, saying, as it goes, " You see the folly of your expectation. God has denied your request for some sufficient reason. Your expectation is vain." The providence of God seems to use similar language, declaring with a thousand voices, that your faith is erroneous and vain. By the law of your nature you pass through multitudinous moods whose differences of light and shade make things look very differently, and if faith pass serenely through them all, it is a wonder of wonders. But the exercise of faith tends also to perfect it; and the repeated, deliberate, prayerful, re-examination of the foundation laid for your future edifice, leaves at length the soul as firmly persuaded of the expected, as it is of the present. Nor while it seeks the future is it impatient with the present, but cheerfully intelligent of whatever there is of good around.
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