God Waits

Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him. (Isaiah 30:18, ESV)
The first words of that verse are like a drop of cool water on a parched tongue. They are a soft pillow of a day of arduous labor. They are a strong embrace around drooping shoulders.
There is not a person alive who doesn't need hear: the Lord waits to be gracious to you. Let those precious and soothing words settle deep upon your mind and soul. They bring rest and relief. Many days, perhaps today, you will do battle with such truth. A part of you (maybe most of you) will rise up to say that such cannot be. God cannot be interested in bestowing grace upon this undeserving sinner. But isn't that the essence of grace? Unworthiness? There cannot be merit or else it is earned, a reward for some good deed.
If there were ever unworthy recipients, it was those who originally heard Isaiah's words. He prophesied to the people of Judah who were neck-deep in rebellion and idolatry. Repeatedly they had been warned by God's prophets, yet they turned with increasing hostility away from their creator. Yet God tells them that he still planned grace for them.
God plans grace for you too. Do you believe him? What in you fights against such a promise? The fact that you are unworthy? That you messed up last weekend? That you have a past that still haunts you? Grace assumes that we don't deserve her. Get ready because God waits to be gracious.