Whether you’ve been forgotten in a doctor’s waiting room or you’ve impatiently tapped your toe in a wrap-around-the-building ticket line, you can probably attest to the truth that waiting is hard.
But in my experience, there’s one kind of waiting that is especially difficult to endure—waiting for a long-held dream to be fulfilled.
This kind of waiting can make us feel discouraged, forgotten, and even embarrassed, when others notice our lack of progress. Yet the words of Elizabeth in Luke 1:24-25 remind us that even when we find ourselves in waiting, God is working. The passage says:
“After this his wife Elizabeth became pregnant and for five months remained in seclusion. “The Lord has done this for me,” she said. “In these days he has shown his favor and taken away my disgrace among the people.”
Elizabeth’s testimony should be hope-giving for us. While our dreams may be different than hers and have different endings, her story reveals two ways God is always at work in our waiting.
ONE. He answers our longings with His better plans.
No doubt, you know the backstory of these verses. Elizabeth and Zechariah were a couple deeply devoted to God, yet after a lifetime of waiting, their dream of becoming parents had not come true.
Then one day, an angel announced to the now-elderly couple that they would have a son—and not just any son, but one of great purpose!
So, when Elizabeth saw the angel’s words come true in her life, she gratefully declared, “The Lord has done this for me.”
This was an answered prayer.
It was a longing fulfilled.
But, let’s face it: this wasn’t the way Elizabeth thought her life would go, having a child in old age.
God had a different plan and timeline for Elizabeth’s life than she did. In the years of waiting, that probably felt painful. But in the end, she discovered it was purposeful.
- Because God had kept her waiting all those years, her son’s life would be perfectly timed to fulfill His God-given purpose in history. He would be the prophesied forerunner for the Messiah (see Luke 1:17).
- Because God had kept her waiting all those years, Elizabeth’s now-miraculous pregnancy could be an encouragement to Mary, who was about to experience a miraculous pregnancy of her own (see Luke 1:36).
- And because God had kept her waiting all those years, the family received unexpected joy and God received great glory when she gave birth to a little boy in old age (see Luke 1:58, 67-79).
When we read Elizabeth’s story it becomes strikingly clear: God’s plans are always better than our own. Even if they don’t check all the boxes of what we thought we wanted, they fulfill our desires in their own, perfect way. They bring blessings we wouldn’t have thought to ask for, but are just what we needed. As one old hymn says, “Hast thou not seen how thy desires e’er have been granted in what He ordaineth?”[1]
We may be in the throes of painful waiting today, but no matter how our waiting ends, we will one day look back with this kind of hindsight. We will see how His plans and His timing really were good—and were good for us.
TWO. He removes our disgrace with His favor.
In Luke 1:25, Elizabeth goes on to say, “In these days he has shown his favor and taken away my disgrace among the people.”
In her day, people judged barren women harshly. They assumed their plight was their own fault. “There must be some reason God hasn’t given her children,” they might whisper behind a woman’s back.
And while we live in a very different world today, there are still moments when our yet-to-be-fulfilled dreams become obvious to others—and it leaves us feeling exposed and even embarrassed.
Can you relate to this?
Maybe…
- you’re the only single in the small group,
- you’re the only couple in the extended family without kids,
- or you’re the only one at the class reunion without an impressive title.
Moments like these can make us wonder if something is wrong with us, since God hasn’t blessed us like He has so many others. But Elizabeth’s words challenge that kind of thinking about God’s blessings and favor.
After years of childlessness, she said God had “shown her His favor.” But the reality is, God didn’t only look at Elizabeth with favor in that singular moment of blessing. He had been looking on her with love and favor during all her years of waiting. Others may have thought her rebuked by God, and she herself may have felt forgotten, but all the while God was actively favoring her as He prepared good gifts for her future days. Plus, earthly blessings aside, God’s eye was on her, which speaks of the blessing of His presence.
Just because we aren’t seeing the blessings we desire today, it does not mean God has stopped looking on us with favor. It does not mean that God has stopped loving us. Often, it is His love and favor that asks us to wait in the first place.
So, even if the fulfillment of our dreams isn’t evident right now, God’s love and favor can still be seen in our lives.
It makes me wonder: what if we asked God to show us His favor and love right now, in the midst of our waiting? You know, God has a million ways He can reveal His love for us—and once we start to see it in the little things, waiting for big, unfulfilled dreams becomes a little less heavy.
No matter what happens, we have assurance we are loved. And no matter how we feel right now, we can know God’s working out even better plans than we can imagine.
Waiting may be hard, but knowing these truths about God makes waiting worth it.
[1] Praise to the Lord, the Almighty written by Joachim Neander (1680), translated by Catherine Winkworth (1863)
This devotion is based on one of the Scriptures from my 2025 reading plan: “A Year in the Gospels” To receive a copy of the reading plan (and future reading plans), sign up for the email list below. Hope you’ll follow along! You can also learn more about my Scripture over Screentime experiment here.
Written by Paige K. Burhans
©2024 Paige K. Burhans
Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV®
Copyright © 1973 1978 1984 2011 by Biblica, Inc. TM
Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
