A Time of Waiting

 No one likes waiting—it’s hard. We say things like, “What’s taking so long?” “What’s the holdup?”  “Don’t they have any competent people around here?” Waiting is uncomfortable. We feel we are wasting time that could be spent more profitably. “I could be doing a hundred other things I want to do.” Waiting, however, is part of life. We wait our turn at the checkout, at the doctor’s office, and in traffic, but most importantly, we wait on God.

Yes, God makes us wait, too. Why would he do that? He does that because we are not ready, so we wait. David had been chosen king but wasn’t prepared, so God had him go through a period of waiting that lasted 13 years. Yikes, we say! David, however, learned to wait. He said, “I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope” (Ps 130:5).

The book of 1 Samuel ends with the death of King Saul. This was the king that the people hoped would deliver them from their enemies, but now he was dead. 1 Samuel opens with these words: “After the death of Saul, David returned from striking down the Amalekites and stayed in Ziklag two days” (2 Samuel 1:1). There is a lot in these words. The Philistines defeated Saul and drove him to suicide. He died an utter failure. The people would have lamented, “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” There is an implied question in the first verse of 2 Samuel, “What will happen after the death of Saul”? If Saul could not keep us safe, what hope was there?

It reminds us of what the followers of Jesus felt after Jesus died on the cross. “but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:21). Jesus’ shameful, humiliating death dashed the hopes of those who had believed in him, just as the death of Saul had shattered the hope of his followers. Some saw Jesus’ terrible death and Saul’s as God’s judgment.

While Saul was gone, there was one victorious person, David. Any hope in Saul was now gone. The narrator tells us that “David returned from striking down the Amalekites and stayed in Ziklag two days” (2 Sam 1:1). Something was happening even though it didn’t look like it. God was working. Those two days were dark, just as they were when Jesus was in the grave, but on the third day, Jesus arose from the dead. In the story of Saul, on the third day, all the attention will turn to David. The lesson is that when all hope is gone—it’s not—God is always doing something for our good. David would become Israel’s greatest king, and Jesus would conquer death be our eternal king.