HH, Sir Godfrey Gregg DDiv

“Let integrity and uprightness preserve me; for I wait on thee.” Psalm 25:21

In the great biblical thought of waiting upon God, there are several interwoven strands of meaning, and it is well to try to distinguish some of these that we may better grasp the importance of the term.

Dependence

The first meaning, nestling at the heart of it and never absent from the mind of any writer, is the concept of dependence. As the baby waits upon its mother for without its mother it will die; as the anguished patient waits upon the surgeon for in the skill of the surgeon is the hope of life, so when one is said to wait on God there is implied an entire dependence upon Him. There is a sense, in biblical phraseology, in which this waiting is a universal thing. “The eyes of all things living to wait on thee.” The bird that sings, the beast that hunts its prey–all of them are waiting upon God. But such an inescapable dependence does not bring the thought to its full blossoming. That demands a dependence which is conscious. It is when we realize, however dimly, that in Him we live and move and have our being, it is when we awaken to the mysterious certainty that we all hang on God for every heartbeat–it is only then the word comes to its fullness in the deep usage of the Scriptures, and man is said to be waiting upon God.

TO BE CONTINUED …….