On The Blessedness of Waiting: Insight from Bonhoeffer

“The blessedness of waiting is lost on those who cannot wait, and the fulfillment of promise is never theirs. They want quick answers to the deepest questions of life and miss the value of those times of anxious waiting, seeking with patient uncertainties until the answers come. They lose the moment when the answers are revealed in dazzling clarity.” – Diedrich Bonhoeffer

There is a blessedness of waiting, however long we need to wait, for the answers to our lives to become clear and for God's promises to be fulfilled. But we are impatient people, often missing the value of the process of waiting. We approach life like business: trying to get quick and efficient results for our goals. That’s not how God works in seasons of waiting.

When I look at my own waiting journey, it was and still is one of long waiting, of answers gradually becoming more clear as one door opened and another closed, as my heart changed and evolved, and as my true desires revealed themselves. Blessed waiting cannot be rushed… it is a prayerful journey of patiently seeking until the answers are made clear. I never imagined they would become so clear, but as Bonhoeffer says, the answers do reveal themselves eventually “with dazzling clarity.”

How my heart and mind have changed over that time! They are practically made new. My thinking has changed. My heart enlarged. My openness to God’s will expanded. If I sought quick answers and results, that would have never happened. Only through waiting, prayer, suffering, searching, and discerning could this manifest. Let God do what God wants to do in your waiting!

Truly, there is blessedness in waiting. We are transformed, made new, and grow in the direction of God’s will and mysteries for our lives.

May you too be one who shares in the blessedness of waiting to see God's promise revealed.