I waited patiently for the Lord to help me, and he turned to me and heard my cry.
He lifted me out of the pit of despair, out of the mud and the mire. He set my feet on solid ground and steadied me as I walked along. He has given me a new song to sing, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see what he has done and be amazed. They will put their trust in the Lord. Oh, the joys of those who trust the Lord. Psalm 40:1-4 (NLT)
Heavenly Father, we so look forward to the day when our cries of “How long, O Lord?” become exuberant declarations of, “Today is the Day of all things new!” Thank you for loving us, even when our sighs outnumber our songs, and our impatience morphs into fear and worry.
We’re grateful for King David’s story recorded in this Psalm. Though our “muddy, miry pits” differ from his, we too are familiar with feelings of weariness and exhaustion. Grant us grace to wait, peace in our waiting, and joy in our trusting.
You have begun a good work in us that you will complete (Phil. 1:6). Nothing can derail or deter your commitment to make us fully like Jesus one Day. We can’t speed up that Day or slow it down. You will make all things beautiful on your time schedule, not ours. Certainly we can trust you with everything else—including the mundane and the monumental stuff of life.
Forgive us, Father, for the “attitudes we cop” when traffic derails our well-planned schedules; when restaurants are busier than our hunger pangs want them to be; when the lab work doesn’t come back on the day it was promised; when the guarantee of a long-prayed-for adoption will take another 6 months and 6K; when the party for a returning prodigal just got indefinitely delayed.
Father, thanks for planting our feet solidly on the Rock of Ages—Jesus, and for rooting us deep in your love, and for hiding our lives irrevocably in Christ. You can be trusted. We do trust you. We will trust you. So very Amen we pray, in Jesus’ trustworthy and worship-worthy name.