Waiting As Defiance

Resisting the Corrosive Culture of The Now

Photo by 13on on Unsplash

Psalm 37 begins with an imperative: “Do not fret because of the wicked.” Clearly, the Psalmist doesn’t know me. I worry all the time. Fret is my middle name. Most days, my life is consumed by worry. However, unlike most people who tell me to cheer up, the Psalmist’s advice isn’t recycled self-help garbage. This directive is not casual advice about worry. It names a temptation that is as ancient as Israel and as current as our own social moment. To “fret” is to allow envy, resentment, and rivalry to take root in the heart. It is to become consumed by the visible success of those who prosper through manipulation and exploitation. The Psalmist recognizes that the wicked often appear to flourish. They accumulate wealth and influence. Their triumphs are celebrated. The temptation is to become gnawed by discontent. The Psalmist’s first word is resistance. Do not submit to the corrosive power of comparison.

In place of envy, the text offers a series of alternative practices. “Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy security.” These are simple words, yet they imagine an alternative economy and politics. To dwell in the land is not to grasp or to hoard but to receive the place of belonging as a gift. To do good is to enact covenantal neighborliness rather than predatory gain. The Psalmist presents a world not governed by rivalry but by trust, not ordered by scarcity but by the sufficiency of divine provision.

Verse four intensifies the reorientation: “Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” The promise is not that God will satisfy every craving. It is that God will transform desire itself. Desire is bent away from envy and toward joy. This is a radical claim in a culture that manufactures dissatisfaction through algorithmic manipulation. The Psalmist insists that the object of delight is not the prosperity of the wicked but the steadfastness of the Lord.

At the center of the passage comes the counsel to wait. “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him.” I despise waiting. Waiting makes me feel powerless. The poet calls me out and tells me I am wrong. Stillness and waiting, he implies, are not signs of passivity; they are signs of resilience. They are acts of defiance against a world addicted to speed and results. To wait patiently is to reject the lie that power is permanent or that injustice will endure forever. It is to stand within the promise that the wicked are like grass that withers. Human machinations may flourish for a season, but they cannot outlast the fidelity of God. Waiting is an act of trust that the future belongs to God alone.

This summons is not directed at isolated individuals. In other words, it’s not about me alone. It’s about you, too. We are all worried. If we have nothing else in common as a society, it is that we are concerned about something. Where politics may divide us, anxiety unites us. That’s why this Psalm is given to a community that lives by covenant. These imperatives shape a communal identity marked by patience and neighborliness. The faithful are invited to become a public witness to an alternative way of being in the world. Amid a culture of anxiety and rivalry, such a community embodies practices of trust and waiting. This is slow work. It requires the daily re-training of the imagination and the courage to live by hope rather than despair.