You Must Wait for Me (1 Nisan 5781) Fourth Sunday of Lent March 14, 2020

 Edited March 16, 2021

I was thinking and praying about God’s signs and wonders among all peoples, nations, tongues, and tribes.  I hear a still small voice, “you must wait for me.”  I later hear the simple word “wedding.”  I searched out the saying, “you must wait for me” and found it in Hosea 3:3 (Douay-Rheims Bible; see also NJB).  The Hebrew text has the verb יָשַׁב (yāšab), meaning “sit, remain, dwell” (TWOT 411).  The NRSV has the following:

The Lord said to me again, “Go, love a woman who has a lover and is an adulteress, just as the Lord loves the people of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes.” So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer of barley and a measure of wine.  And I said to her, “You must remain as mine for many days; you shall not play the whore, you shall not have intercourse with a man, nor I with you.”  For the Israelites shall remain many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or teraphim.  Afterward the Israelites shall return and seek the Lord their God, and David their king; they shall come in awe to the Lord and to his goodness in the latter days (Hos 3:1-5).

I see parallels between what is above and Habakkuk.

        O Lord, I have heard of your renown,

and I stand in awe, O Lord, of your work.

   In our own time revive it;

in our own time make it known;

in wrath may you remember mercy (3:2). 

Finally, I recall the prayer to God of Pope John XXIII in 1962 that began, “Renew Your wonders in this our day, as by a new Pentecost….” 

It seems then that there are two important dimensions: 1) the individual who seeks, watches, and prays for God’s renewal/revival; 2) the Almighty God who brings it about in his timing.    

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Olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane 

What looks like a heart sitting within a heart among the olive trees east of the Temple Mount/Harm al-Sharif in Jerusalem, Israel.