Make Haste, My Beloved

I wanted to wait until Good Friday to release my final devotional in our Lenten Journey Towards Wholehearted Love series because both Song of Songs and Lenten spirituality end in the same place — waiting.

At the end of Lent, we find ourselves contemplating the death of Jesus, waiting in silent hope for resurrection.

At the end of Song of Songs, the Bride finds herself waiting for the return of her Beloved. She says:

And, similarly, I imagine many of us find ourselves somewhere between Good Friday and Easter Sunday — waiting.

As we contemplate Good Friday today, I’d love to invite us to ask God: What, this Lent, have You invited me to die to or to let go of? Is there a situation, a dream, a circumstance, or a way of thinking that has died or that I need to release?

Many of us prefer to cling to what God is inviting us to die to, and then many of us resist the waiting that inevitably comes after death to jump straight to Resurrection Sunday.

Yet, following Jesus towards wholehearted love means that we will find ourselves waiting in the middle more often than we think, and for longer than we think, and more than we would ever want to on our own.

Even the Bible itself ends with a prayer of waiting in Revelation 22:17:

A journey of growing in love is ultimately a journey of growing in longing for God, and longing is always cultivated in a place of unfulfillment.

While we wait for the dream to come true, the finances to come in, the relationship to materialize, or the situation to resolve, we have an opportunity to cultivate a heart of choosing to love God more than the thing we are waiting for.

Waiting is always an invitation to choose love. It’s an invitation to “direct our hearts towards the love of God” as Paul writes in 2 Thessalonians 3:5.

Waiting is a journey of letting Jesus disciple our desires until they are directed toward Him and Him alone. In waiting, we get set free from everything that we long for other than Him, and everything that ultimately would not satisfy us like only He can.

In The Emotionally Healthy Leader, Pete Scazzero writes: “No one enjoys waiting. But waiting for God is one of the central experiences of the Christian life” (p. 282).

I would elaborate on this — no one enjoys waiting, and we like to do whatever we can to avoid it. We rush to solutions, we go too quickly, or if we must wait for something, we numb the pain or boredom of it by checking our phones or watching Netflix.

Yet, the deepest growth in our love for God happens while we wait. We spend most of our lives waiting — somewhere in between promise and fulfillment, death and resurrection, Egypt and the Promise Land — and so we’d better get good at it!

My advice (if I can humbly offer it) is the best way to learn to wait is to learn to love. And the best way to learn to love is to learn to be present.

To slow down, take a breath, and notice.

Who is standing in front of you? What are the gifts of today? Where and how are you sensing the presence of God right now?

And how can you bring all of those things — the people in front of you, the gifts, and the sense of God’s presence — back to God in a lovesick prayer?

How can you orient your heart to wait for God and God alone?

So, I’d love to invite us to pray today:

• Begin by taking some deep breaths in and out. Perhaps as you breathe in pray the words from Song of Songs 1:4: “Draw me,” and as you breathe out pray: “after You.”

• Once you feel settled, begin to name with honesty: Has God invited you to die to anything this Lent? How might this death be an invitation to wait until God comes and resurrects it?

• Then, simply talk to the Lord. Perhaps just pray the words of Song of Songs 8:14, inviting God to disciple your desires: “Make haste, my Beloved.”

Amen!

P.S. Happy Easter from my family to yours 🙂