Anticipation. Carly Simon sang about it, back when a slow drip of ketchup was the soundtrack to impatience. Countless books have been written about it, from Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot to a shelf of devotional volumes on Advent. And teenagers and young adults have danced to it in pop hits like Timeless (The Weekend) at school gyms and wedding receptions, whether or not they knew the lyrics.
But nothing speaks of anticipation like awaiting childbirth. This week, our eighth grandchild is due to be born. As much as my wife and I anticipate the birth, our daughter-in-law, Kayla, anticipates it far more. She is, as the old phrase has it, “great with child.”
I should say that I write about this as a man who has never given birth. There is a vast difference between being there and being the one who does the work.
It reminds me of the old story of the expectant father in the days when dads were banished to the waiting room. It was his first child. He drank cup after cup of coffee. He was so wound up that he started smoking cigarettes, though he had never smoked in his life, pacing the floor with perspiration on his brow. At last, after a grueling delivery, the nurse brought the good news: a baby girl. “Thank goodness, a girl,” he exclaimed. “At least she’ll never have to go through what I’ve been through in this waiting room.”
We laugh because we recognize ourselves. Those of us on the sidelines tend to believe our nervous pacing is the heavy labor. It isn’t. Still, the waiting room has its own kind of ache, and Scripture knows something about it.
The Bible is a book of waiting. Abraham and Sarah waited decades for the promised child. Simeon waited in the temple, and Luke tells us he had been promised he would not die before seeing the Lord’s Messiah (Luke 2:25-26). Advent is a season set aside to teach the church how to wait.
But Scripture does not ask us to wait the way the father in the story did, fueled by caffeine and dread. It invites us to wait as an act of faith. “Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD” (Psalm 27:14). Isaiah promises that “those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles” (Isaiah 40:31). And Paul, writing to the Romans, says, “If we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (Romans 8:25).
Notice that biblical waiting is never passive. The psalmist says to be strong and take courage. Isaiah speaks of renewed strength. Paul speaks of patience, not as the absence of feeling, but as the discipline of trust. Waiting in faith means we stop pacing, stop gripping the coffee cup, and start praying.
Author and priest Henri Nouwen put it beautifully: “The spiritual life is a life in which we wait, actively present to the moment, expecting new things to happen.”
The poet John Milton, who lost his sight and wondered how he could serve God, concluded his famous sonnet with the line, “They also serve who only stand and wait.”
Standing and waiting, it turns out, can be holy work.
Kayla understands this better than anyone. She cannot hurry the child along. She cannot skip the final days. She can only prepare, rest, trust, and wait, all while carrying a new life that is already loved before he has drawn his first breath. In her, anticipation is not an idle feeling. It is hope with a body.
That is the waiting God asks of us: not nervous pacing, but trusting expectation, the kind that prepares the room, packs the bag, and prays.
Whatever you are waiting for this week- a diagnosis, a job, a reconciliation, or a long-promised answer- may you wait as David and Kayla do, carrying hope close and trusting the One who is faithful.
And when the news finally comes, and a little voice announces himself to the world, we will know that the waiting was worth it.