The Cost

We all give up time and energy—and sometimes money—to cover up the places that feel the weakest in our lives. We wear different clothes to hide the pounds we’ve gained, we avoid people who have hurt us, we stop trying to make new friends, we stop going to church, we stop hoping. Our lives feel hollowed out, painful to the touch. While weakness has its own cost, there’s another cost most of us face in these painful places. It’s the cost of waiting.

The cost of waiting means that we come to terms with our inability to make anything happen on our own—it means tossing ourselves at the feet of Jesus and asking him to do what we cannot. But there we will discover that in the waiting, we can encounter Jesus.

Jesus, the great cost-payer. Jesus, the one who paid the highest price of all time for all our brokenness—the price of his own life and blood (1 Pet. 1:18–19). Jesus alone knows the true cost of brokenness and sin, weakness and failure; he has already paid for it on the Cross. We can trust that as we struggle with sickness or sin, with a broken marriage or a disobedient child, he understands. He has already paid the cost. That is why, as we wait for him to do what we cannot—to heal us, to help us, to make a way where there is no way—we can trust him. God will give us what we need—even if it is not in our way or our timing—because he loves us.

Ann Swindell is the author of Still Waiting: Hope for When God Doesn’t Give You What You Want(Tyndale). Learn more at AnnSwindell.com and on Twitter at @AnnSwindell.