Waiting on God in the midst of a deferred hope

I. Introduction

In 2020, I wrote a three-part blog series on Proverbs 13:12, which reads, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when the desire comes, it is a tree of life.”  We praise God when the desire does come, when the dream come true, and rightly so.  But what do we do when the desired thing doesn’t come to pass?  What do we do when that sickness lingers on, with no healing in sight?  What happens to our hearts when that prodigal child doesn’t come home, despite praying for decades?  What happens when your longing for a spouse doesn’t come to fruition; or you can’t have children?  These are intensely real questions.  And since this subject hits me a lot differently now than when I wrote about it in 2020, here I am talking about it again.

II. Reflections

To begin, I was blessed by the words of a got questions.org article.  If you find yourself resonating with this topic, I would encourage you to read the entirety of the article, which can be found here.  The author writes, “The term deferred in the passage means “to put off” or “drag out” as in a long, drawn-out process.  Hope deferred can look like many things: a prayer of salvation for a loved one that continues year after year, an agonizing job search filled with endless interviews and rejections, a long-term battle with cancer, or a heartbreaking string of miscarriages.  As we eagerly hope for something important, and it keeps being postponed, the longing we feel can make our heart sick.”        

Candidly, I resonate with the sentiments of that article.  To be transparent with you, I have unmet dreams in my life; I know what it’s like to feel heartsick over hopes long deferred.  So I want to write a few words about it.  In fact, in many ways I’m talking to myself as I write this, and if you are helped too, that’s great. 

One thing I continually learn is that a deferred hope needs to be kept in its proper context.  In other words, it should never become more important than God Himself.  That same got questions.com article gives these helpful words: “While getting what we desire can be an excellent thing, we must not allow the pursuit of fulfillment to become a temptation to sin.  Waiting is an opportunity to trust God and allow Him to work in our hearts and strengthen our character: “But if we look forward to something we don’t have yet, we must wait patiently and confidently” (Romans 8:25, NLT; see also Romans 5:4.)  We ought to see these long stretches as opportunities to turn to God and depend on Him in our weakness (Psalm 62:1,5; 2 Corinthians 12:9-10).”

III. Illustration

I had the opportunity to re-watch the 2004 film “Spider-Man 2” (by the way, it was a month ago that I was released from that emergency room hospital; what a delight to be able to see this great movie again).  It’s striking that Peter Parker/Spider-Man learned an important lesson that is related to this topic.  Otto Octavius had the dream of creating a new form of renewable energy, by harnessing the power of a kind of miniature sun that can only be handled with four mechanical arms.  But the experiment fails, and the arms are welded to Otto’s body.  And they actually begin to take him over.

In the exciting finale, after Otto re-creates the experiment again on a much larger scale, it begins to go haywire, just as it had before.  So much so that many innocent people were in real danger.  So Peter reveals his identity to Otto and tells him that the entire project needs to be destroyed.  Otto refuses.  Peter tells him that the arms have turned him villainous.  “It was my dream,” Otto replies.  Peter answers with words that are precious to me: “Sometimes to do what’s right we have to be steady, and give up the thing we want the most.  Even our dreams.”  Ultimately, Otto repents, drowns his project, and in doing so, he selflessly sacrifices his life. 

Furthermore, Peter was willing to practice what he preached.  When Mary Jane, the woman he loved, learned his superhero identity, he told her that now she knew why they couldn’t be together.  Peter had resolved to give up his dream of being with her.  Of course, Mary Jane had a say in this.  And when MJ ran away from the man she was going to marry to Peter, and declared that she wanted to be with him, no matter the danger, Peter happily agreed (and thus we’re treated to an extremely happy ending).  But this is a layer of the film I didn’t catch initially: Peter and Otto’s resolution at the end of the film mirror each other.

IV. Conclusion

John Ortberg, in his fine book, “If You Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat” writes, “Waiting is a good thing for people like me.  It reminds me that I am not in charge.  I’m the patient.  I’m in the waiting room.  Waiting humbles me in ways I need to be humbled.  But in the real issues of life, we are not just waiting around – we are waiting on God.  Therefore we can trust his wisdom and timing.”  He goes on to say this, at the very end of the same chapter: “what we wait for is not more important than what happens to us while we are waiting.”

God bless,

Kevin