I am waiting on an answer that will decide the next few years of my life and I cannot plan anything until it comes. Living in limbo is grinding me down. How do I wait well?

“I wait for the LORD, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope. My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning.”

This is a pilgrim psalm, sung on the way up to Jerusalem by people who knew about waiting. The image is of a night watchman scanning the horizon for the first light, and the psalmist says his soul waits more than they do. Watchmen wait actively, at their post, doing their job through the dark. The waiting described here is not passivity. It is attention held over a long stretch of time.

“For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.”

Paul points out the obvious thing we usually miss: hope that is seen is not hope at all, because nobody hopes for what they already have. Waiting is therefore not an interruption of the Christian life but its ordinary texture. He pairs hope with patience, which in his vocabulary means endurance under load rather than a calm temperament. It is a word for people carrying something over distance.