I have two teenagers and a tween which means that I spend a disproportionate amount of my day waiting. I wait (sometimes patiently, often impatiently) for them to get to the car so we can make it to school with 22 seconds to spare before the bell. I receive a string of texts asking for me to pick up so and so at at such and such only to wait there for the pokey portion of said teenagers to make their way to me with all the haste of a crowd of snails. I wait for the post-game speeches and the gathering of all the sports equipment.

One would think that with so much practice at waiting, I would be an excellent waiter by now. However, the Spirit convicted me this week about the difference between waiting on someone and waiting for someone or something.

The Difference a Preposition Makes

The seemingly small difference between two prepositions has been checking and challenging my heart this week. Waiting on is goal-oriented and postured toward product, while waiting for is relational and postured toward presence. Waiting on has an agenda in mind, but waiting for implies that the agenda is intimacy. We wait on a package; we wait for a child to be born. Most of the above waiting examples highlight what waiting on looks like. I am waiting on my children to complete a task, to check a box, to finish a course of action. I am waiting on them to do their part so my day can move along in the desired direction and according to plan.

When I am waiting on husband to get home from work so we can eat dinner, I am more focused on the dinner and the flow of the evening than the return of my husband into our home. However, when I am waiting for my husband and children rather than waiting on them, I am eagerly awaiting their presence and company; I am looking forward to hearing about their respective days, listening for insight into who they are and ways to better engage and love them.

To be certain there is overlap between the two different ways to wait. For example, when my husband has been out of town, I find myself eagerly waiting for his return. His absence bathes my perspective in new light and reminds me how much I love our life together. When his flight is delayed, I start pacing, waiting on his departure. Here the two collapse into one another: I am waiting on his flight because my heart is waiting for his return.

Waiting For God

The problem, at least when I think about this nuanced difference in light of my walk with the Lord, comes when the waiting on eclipses or engulfs the waiting for. This week, after studying some passages about waiting for the Lord, I found myself defensively saying to God, “But I have been waiting for you.” The Spirit was quick to show me that I have been waiting on God, not for him. I have been waiting on God to answer specific prayers, to provide specific desires, to meet certain expectations I had unknowingly placed upon him. I’ve spent a good bit of time journaling through the emotions of waiting on this things, bringing them to the Lord, and wrestling with him. But somehow, in all that actively waiting on God, I lost sight of waiting for him. I slowly started wanting the gifts more than the Giver, the products only he can offer rather than the peace of his presence.

God was so gracious to convict and reorient my heart, to remind me that he is infinitely worth waiting for, even when the specific things I have been waiting on may not be his best for me or us.

I love the words of the prophet Isaiah as he imagined the new heavens and the new earth::

“It will be said on that day, ‘Behold, this is our God; we have waiting for him, that he might save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation’!” (Isaiah 25:9).

David expresses a similar sentiment in the poetry of the psalms:

“I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning” (Psalm 130:5–6).

In the midst of your waiting on all kinds of desires and dreams and provisions, don’t lose sight of the One who is infinitely worth waiting for!