The Tension Where Truth Lives

There’s a tension I always experience when I’m forced to wait.
It doesn’t matter if I’m waiting on the condition of someone I’m visiting in a hospital… or sitting on a runway while a plane refuses to take off. Waiting carries a pressure of its own.

Waiting is never neutral.

It presses on the parts of us that still believe movement equals control. It exposes how much peace we borrow from progress. When nothing is happening on the outside, everything starts happening on the inside—and most of it isn’t flattering.

Waiting rooms don’t just slow time.
They strip illusion.

You realize how little your faith has been tested without answers. How often trust has depended on updates, timelines, and assurances that things are “moving forward.” Waiting removes all of that. No explanations. No clarity. Just space—and the uncomfortable realization that God is not obligated to explain Himself to keep us faithful.

That’s where the tension sharpens.

Because in waiting, God doesn’t rush to comfort you.
He also doesn’t leave.

He stays quiet enough to force an honest question:
Was I trusting Him… or trusting outcomes?

Waiting has taught me that much of what I called patience was actually distraction. Much of what I called faith was momentum. And much of what I called peace couldn’t survive stillness.

But here’s the part I didn’t expect:

God often feels closer in waiting than in resolution.

Not because answers arrive—but because pretenses fall away. You stop managing impressions. You stop rehearsing theology. You stop pretending strength. And in that exposed space, God meets you—not to fix the moment, but to reform the person.

Waiting rooms taught me something I didn’t want to learn:
God is not revealed by speed.
He is revealed by presence.

I still resist waiting.
But I no longer assume delay means abandonment.

Sometimes waiting is not God withholding something from us…
It’s God removing what we’ve been leaning on.
Pastor Charles E. Howse Jr
Beth-El Baptist Church
@highlight
Thetensionwheretruthlives.org