“I’m thirty-five and single—haven’t I learned enough about waiting?”
I said it as a joke when telling a friend about yet another delay in my kitchen renovation project, but I wasn’t entirely kidding. For me, singleness has been the greatest lesson in waiting that I never asked God for. Whatever forms our waiting may take, I expect there are few of us who enjoy the process of waiting, whether we’re waiting for information, for a hope to be fulfilled, for the pain to lessen, or anything else. Waiting comes mixed with a host of other challenging experiences, too. Doubt. Frustration. Uncertainty. Jealousy. Sadness. At times we can become overwhelmed by all these unwelcome lessons waiting has brought into our lives, and we may become so exhausted we decide we absolutely can’t wait any longer: Something has to be done.
And it’s what we do in our waiting that makes all the difference.
The Choices We Have in the Waiting
We don’t have to get very far in the Bible to find a story about waiting, and of one couple’s choice in that waiting. In Genesis 15:5, God makes a powerful promise to Abram (whose name gets changed to Abraham)–that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the night sky. Yet chapter 16 starts out, “Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; so she said to Abram, ‘The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her’” (Genesis 16:1–2 NIV). At Sarai’s urging, Abraham has sexual relations with Hagar. Hagar was treated as property, her body and her future child used to serve someone else’s plan. When Hagar does become pregnant, Sarai (whose name gets changed to Sarah) resents her and abuses Hagar so severely that Hagar fled into the wilderness, desperate to escape. There, God met Hagar and promised her and her son a future (Genesis 16:9–13).
As Abraham and Sarah’s story continues, God again promises Abraham that he will “multiply him greatly” (Genesis 17:2 NIV), but not through Hagar’s son. Abraham and Sarah’s skepticism about having children was understandable, since Genesis 17 records that Abraham was nearly one hundred years old, and Sarah nearly ninety. But instead of turning to God in their waiting, they turned away from God with their waiting and sought to create the promised plot twist themselves by exploiting Hagar. While Sarah does become pregnant and gives birth to Isaac, the son through whom God would confirm his covenant with them, their waiting was filled with fear, doubt, and mistrust.
Later in the Old Testament, we encounter another woman who was unable to have children. At the opening of 1 Samuel, we’re told that Elkanah had two wives, Hannah and Peninnah. “Peninnah had children, but Hannah was childless” (1 Samuel 1:2 NIV), Peninnah taunted Hannah over her inability to have children, and Hannah “would weep and not eat” (v. 7). Eventually, Hannah went to the temple and “prayed to the Lord and wept with many tears” (v. 9). The priest, Eli, initially believed she was drunk, but after Hannah explained her prayers, “Eli responded, ‘Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant the request you’ve made of him’” (1 Samuel 1:17 NIV). “Then Hannah went on her way; she ate and no longer looked despondent” (1 Samuel 1:18 NIV).
Sarah and Hannah share a similar pain—the wait of not being able to have children. Yet their choices in it could not be more different.
Another Way to Wait
Sarah and Abraham heard God’s promise and turned away from God with their waiting. There’s no record of them asking God if he wanted them to abuse Hagar to fulfill his promise; they just went ahead and did what they thought was best.
Hannah, on the other hand, took her waiting to God. Though she was in deep anguish from her childlessness and from being taunted by Peninnah, she went to God in fervent prayer. She was dedicated, even going to the temple to focus so specifically on praying this request.
Sarah and Hannah’s different decisions don’t take away any of the real pain these real women felt over their childlessness, nor should we walk away thinking that God will fulfill our requests if we just “follow the rules of waiting.” God always promises his presence, but he doesn’t always promise the exact outcomes we desire, or that they’ll come in the timeline we prefer.
We may not have control over the type of waiting we’re facing in our lives, but we do have control over what we do with our waiting. The fear, the uncertainty, the jealousy may surround us on all sides. Those feelings may swarm us all the more when we see others seemingly having an easy time. When we’re facing down the exhaustion of waiting, do we take it away from God, only seeing the ways we must hurry and scurry to try to arrange things just so in order that God will act? Or do we take it to God, returning again and again in persistent prayer—and ultimately trusting the outcome to him?
—Written by Brianna DeWitt. Used by permission from the author.
