Waiting with patience – expecting the promise

Waiting with patience – expecting the promise

As Kelly, Madi and I wait for our baby to be born, which is (according to Kelly) hopefully sooner rather than later, we’re learning a lot about patience. Every morning, we wake with a sense of expectancy: Will today be the day? We’re surrounded by signs of new life, of preparation and anticipation as we do all those ‘normal’ jobs of getting ready. Yet, in the waiting, there’s also an invitation to trust.

At Church House, we’ve recently been trialling a new care software system. When loading a page, it flashes the words: “Love, joy, peace…” and then it pauses, and I find myself repeating the next of those fruit of the Spirit: patience. Especially when the screen takes a little bit longer to load that I might like it to. But this also reminds me that patience isn’t passive – it is actually a posture of faith.

We know that scripture gives us so many stories of waiting, doesn’t it. Abraham and Sarah waited for their promised child, Isaac. Israel waited for deliverance in the wilderness. Simeon and Anna waited in the temple for the Messiah. And in each of these, God was not absent in the waiting. God was preparing hearts, shaping faith, and fulfilling promises in His perfect time.

Pregnancy is a beautiful reflection of that divine timing. You can’t rush growth; you can only nurture it. And just as our child is being formed unseen, so too God works quietly and tenderly within us, growing love, joy, peace, and yes, patience.

So as we wait: for new life, for promises to unfold, for God’s next chapter, may we remember that waiting with faith is never wasted time. Because in the waiting, God is already at work.

“But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently” — Romans 8:25.

Arlo Fox Hentschke was born on 31 October 2025 at 10:31am, weighing 2.84kg (6lb 4oz) and measuring 50.5 cm long. Pastor Ben is on paternity leave, returning mid-January 2026.