Watered by Love

It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.
✙ Lamentations 3:26
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The Bible makes a big deal out of waiting. Waiting for God is encouraged throughout the psalms. And one of our favorite verses—the one that tells us that those who wait for the Lord shall... mount up with wings like eagles—attaches grand promises to waiting. But what virtue is there to waiting for God's salvation? Wouldn't a world filled with inactive believers be even worse off than it is now?

Ah, but that's just the thing. Waiting... even waiting quietly... for God... The Bible never uses waiting as a synonym for being inactive. We may need to wait for what we don't know. But there is much we do know. And to wait for God is to put to practice those things that are clear to us. Paul writes of three concepts that are good place to start: faith, hope, and love. To have faith and hope are already built into the waiting. And while they may help others, they are mainly directed inward. But to have love is to direct our waiting beyond ourselves. Loving God with all I've got and my neighbor as myself will not detract from my waiting. But they will make the waiting worthwhile. 

To wait is not to be dormant. Hope may grow from the roots of faith, but it is love that waters the roots, making the tree strong and directing it upward to God, even as it branches out toward others.
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May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.
✙ 2 Thessalonians 3:5
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Prayer after thinking about today's devotion:
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Grant me the patience to wait for you, O God, and the confidence to reach upward and outward in love.
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After your own thanksgivings & petitions, close with the Lord's Prayer.
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