04/28/2026

Day 28 

God Meets You in the Wait 

Scripture: Exodus 3:4 

Even in waiting, God meets us 

Be still, listen — are you sensing God's presence?

There is a meeting that happens in the most unexpected geography. Not in the cathedral, not in the sanctuary, not in the carefully arranged moment of corporate worship where the atmosphere has been prepared and the conditions seem favorable for an encounter with the divine — but in the middle of the ordinary. In the middle of the routine. In the middle of the long, unremarkable stretch of days that make up the waiting season, when the landscape of your life has become so familiar in its sameness that you have stopped expecting anything to interrupt it. This is precisely where God chose to appear to Moses — not in a palace, not in a temple, not at the peak of spiritual preparation, but on the back side of a desert, in the middle of a shepherding routine that Moses had been performing for forty years, beside a bush that was burning without being consumed. The extraordinary erupted inside the ordinary. The eternal interrupted the mundane. And the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob called a man by name from the center of a flame.

Moses was in his own waiting season — and it was one of the longest recorded in Scripture. Forty years. Four decades of tending sheep in Midian after fleeing Egypt, after the violent impulsiveness of his younger years had collapsed his identity and exiled him from everything he had known. Forty years of obscurity following a life of Egyptian royalty. Forty years of the unhurried, unglamorous, repetitive work of a shepherd while an entire nation of his people groaned under the weight of slavery. And then — on a day that began identically to every other day before it — "the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire from the middle of a bush" (Exodus 3:2, NLT). The bush burned. And Moses, in one of the most instructive moments of attentive faith in all of Scripture, turned aside to look. He did not dismiss it. He did not explain it away. He stopped the routine, redirected his steps, and leaned toward the strange fire. And it was in that turning — that deliberate, curious, faith-attentive turning — that God called his name: "Moses! Moses!" (Exodus 3:4, NLT).

The encounter was waiting for the turning. God had been present before Moses noticed. The bush had been burning before Moses looked. The meeting was not initiated by Moses's spiritual preparation or his theological readiness — it was initiated by the sovereign, pursuing, name-knowing God who had been watching a shepherd on a hillside for forty years and had chosen this morning, this bush, this unremarkable stretch of desert road to say: I am here. I have always been here. Turn and see Me. This is the staggering truth about God's presence in the waiting season: He is not waiting for you to become spiritually sophisticated enough to find Him. He is burning in the middle of your ordinary, calling your name, and waiting for you to turn aside and recognize that what looks like just another unremarkable day in the long waiting season is actually the threshold of an encounter that will redefine everything.

The prophet Jeremiah carries this truth with a personal, almost aching directness: "If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me. I will be found by you" (Jeremiah 29:13–14a, NLT). The finding is promised to the seeking — but the seeking must be wholehearted, which means it must be deliberate. It means turning aside from the familiar path of the daily routine long enough to notice the burning bush that the busyness of waiting has caused you to walk past. Because the waiting season has a way of becoming its own kind of noise — the noise of anxiety, of unanswered questions, of the relentless mental rehearsal of what has not yet come — and in that noise, the voice that has been calling your name can be drowned out not by rebellion but by inattention.

Jesus Himself promises this encounter with an intimacy that should dissolve every fear that His presence is reserved for the spiritually accomplished: "Look! I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal together as friends" (Revelation 3:20, NLT). He is at the door of the waiting season. He is knocking in the ordinary Tuesday, in the unremarkable morning, in the stretch of days that feel identical and empty and interminable. The meeting is not somewhere ahead of you, contingent on the waiting being over. The meeting is available right now — in the middle of it, in the ordinary of it, in the burning bush of this very moment — if you will only turn aside to look.

Zephaniah captures the breathtaking reality of a God who does not merely wait to be found but actively, joyfully moves toward the one who is waiting: "For the Lord your God is living among you. He is a mighty savior. He will take delight in you with gladness. With his love, he will calm all your fears. He will rejoice over you with joyful songs" (Zephaniah 3:17, NLT). He is not distant. He is not silent. He is singing over you — in the waiting, in the desert, in the forty years of ordinary days that preceded the burning bush. Turn aside. Listen. The flame has been burning this whole time.

Today's Challenge:

Carve out twenty minutes today to deliberately turn aside from your routine — silence your phone, close the tasks, step away from the noise — and sit in attentive stillness before God. Speak this aloud as your opening: "Lord, I am turning aside. Speak to me. I believe You are present in this waiting, and I am listening." Then sit in silence and pay attention — to Scripture that surfaces, to impressions that form, to the quiet whisper that has perhaps been speaking beneath the noise of the waiting all along. Write down whatever you sense, however small. Close by declaring: "God meets me in the wait. The bush has been burning. I will not walk past it again."

"God is not waiting for your season to end before He shows up — He is burning in the middle of your most ordinary day, calling you by name, and the only thing standing between you and the encounter is whether you will turn aside long enough to see that the flame was never meant to be explained away, but entered."