“I wait for the Lord, my soul waits and in his word, I hope my soul waits for the Lord more than watchman for the morning, more than Watchmen for the morning.”
– Psalm 130:5–6
Psalm 130:5–6 is so beautiful and so powerful. So emotional. I mean, you hear just in the repetition over and over, I wait for the Lord, my soul waits my soul waits for the Lord, two verses repeats that three times and then closes, more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.
Why would it repeat in that way? Because there’s this longing. It just says the same thing over and over again, more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchman for the morning. More than I wait for the morning to come, day in and day out, I’m waiting for the Lord. And as I read these two verses, and I think about how we’re just praying for specific needs for each other, that people are sending in at radical.net/prayerrequests.
Psalm 130:5–6 Reminds Us to Trust God in the Waiting
Lord, we trust that as we are waiting, You are working. Our hope is in Your Word.
I read these verses and I think this is indeed a season of waiting in so many ways, right? We’re sheltered at home waiting for cases of this virus to go down, for deaths to go down, we’re waiting day in and day out for a vaccine, for treatments. We’re waiting in all kinds of different ways.
I think about my life and family as I’ve shared at different points in this podcast and how Heather prayed a week ago on mother’s how we were waiting to go and adopt a child into our home that we’ve been matched with and I have a child on the other side of the world that we were just three days away from leaving to go and pick up when everything shut down in that country and as a result, we have been waiting since and waiting day in and day out. And I’m just pleading every day, it’s the same words over and over and over again. God, please make a way, God, please make away. Please make away.
Do you ever find yourself just saying the same thing over and over and over again and waiting? So that’s where the second part of verse five is so powerful and encouraging. So verse five starts, “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits.” And the second part says, “And in his word, I hope.” That is an awesome picture. That in the middle of waiting that we have hope.
Psalm 130:5–6 Leads Us to Pray for Hope
So God, in this season of waiting right now, we say in your word, we hope in your character. We have hope in you. Oh God, you are our hope in our waiting. You are our hope for an end to this pandemic. You, oh God, you are our hope. No one, nothing else. You are our hope, only you can bring about a vaccine. Only you can bring about treatments. Only you can restore economies. Ultimately, only you can provide for all of our needs. Our hope is in you. I hope is not in man. Our hope is in you alone and we wait for you.
This Verse Leads Us to Plead with God
And as we wait, we plead oh God, we plead for all these things, God we ask for a vaccine. We ask for treatments. God, we ask for restoration of jobs and the economy, that we might live and experience your provision. Oh God, we ask for these things, not just in our country, we ask for these things around the world, we ask for your protection, we ask for your help in the middle of this pandemic. Our hope is in you. It’s in you. And we wait for you and we trust that as we are waiting you are working. God, we don’t always understand, we know you have the power to bring about a vaccine tomorrow.
You have the power to make it possible for me to go get my son tomorrow and yet in your wisdom and your love, amidst the falleness of this world, God we find ourselves waiting but hoping. Waiting but trusting in you. And so, we say together, Psalm 130:5–6, all around the world from all kinds of different perspectives, we say this together. We wait for the Lord, our souls wait and in your word we hope. Our souls wait for you, oh Lord. More than watchmen for the morning, more than Watchmen for the morning. In Jesus’ name we pray and we wait and we hope. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
