What I Can Expect

In the morning, O LORD, you hear my voice;
in the morning I lay my requests before you
and wait in expectation. Psalm 5:3 (NIV)

I love mornings in the spring. The trees in my neighborhood have dressed themselves in wonderful shades of green. The air is cool, but no longer has a nip in it. Aerobic exercise is not hard to achieve walking the hills around me. I generally delight in the breathtaking beauty surrounding me, but several weeks ago my eyes did not relish my surroundings. My thoughts were a million miles away from what my eyes were seeing.

My husband and I are facing the possibility of a huge change in our lives. This change will affect our future lives in ways we cannot possibly know from the vantage point we are at today. The change came upon us with no warning and required a very quick decision from us. There is something disconcerting about how fast this has all happened to us.

The morning of my walk was a desperate time of wrestling with God over our future. Scripture meditation and memorization have profoundly deepened my relationship to Christ. I had gathered about ten verses typed out on paper that had the word morning in them. My initial reason for finding these verses has been forgotten in the whirlwind of the last several weeks. On my walk that morning, I kept returning to Psalm 5:3:

“In the morning, O LORD, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation.”      

I decided that my confused heart needed to claim this verse for itself. My conversation with the Lord went something like this:

Father, I know and believe that you are hearing my voice this morning as though I was the only one in the universe talking to you right now. I know that You are listening to me. You already know all that I am upset and confused over. In fact, Lord, You know better than I do why I am so upset over all that has happened. It seems silly to tell You what you already know, but I have to lay my requests before You for my own sake. My own ears and heart need to know that I have discussed all of this with you. So now I am going to wait expectantly for You to answer me. Give me peace in the waiting.

I used to think that waiting in expectation meant that I would soon see my request answered in the way I wanted it to be fulfilled. That is not the case. There are some requests that I have prayed for over a hundred times that have not seemed to change one iota. But in the process of laying my requests out before the Lord, I have learned to expect things greater than my prayers being answered the way I want them to be.