We cannot know the plans of God for us beyond His promises that He is working for our good at all times. And often we are far from comfortable as we wait. But, just as David wrote in the psalm, we, too, can remember God’s great love and faithfulness and trust that our King is forging something beautiful in us even as we wait. He is making us into a people who will be able to fully partake of the feast He is preparing. He is making us into a people who will worship Him in the waiting, saying, “Be exalted, O God, above the heavens; let your glory be over all the earth!”

In our waiting God often deepens our hunger as well. A fabulous hors d’oeuvre is meant to awaken the appetite, not to quench it. It cultivates hunger by offering a hint of what is coming. There’s a taste, a promise of being satisfied. Jesus awakens our longing for Him by using all kinds of things. He offers aromas of His goodness through His Word. He awakens our hunger through laughter, through beauty, joy, and connection. He quickens our longing in silence and solitude. He even increases our hunger through pain. Through sorrow and suffering, our longing for Jesus grows. He enlarges our hearts’ capacity to wait with expectant hope through encounters with His loving presence as well as through times of loneliness and ache. We come to know Jesus in the waiting, not as one who is teasing out our time for some unknown sadistic reason but as the One who is sharing the experience of waiting with us, creating a union between His heart and our own.

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