Waiting and wishing

"Want to know a secret? Promise not to tell? We're standing by wishing well!" Snow White's impossibly songbird like voice flutters, "Make a wish into the well, that's all you have to do, and if you hear it echoing, your wish will soon come true!"  Psalm 80, a song of Asaph, can sound a bit like a wish. Their brother tribes of the north have been taken captive by Assyria. No buffer exists between Judah and their own exile. "Give ear, O shepherd of Israel...stir up your might...come and save us!" Sung, shouted or prayed, the cry sounds like a wish dropped into the darkest depths of a well - sounds a bit like our own wishes that God would come to us and act, even in the light of our own inaction. In the midst of all the trouble in our lives, in the time waiting for His miraculous and magnificent intervention, it seems that we can only come to God with impatient wishes while the opportunities to see and participate in His mighty acts pass us by. There is something beautiful about the way Snow White humbly trusts that her pleas will be heard, albeit that she has directed them the wrong way! There is more to be said for the pleas of Asaph ,who calls upon the Shepherd of Israel, the one who leads His flock through the depths of darkness and into the marvelous shining light of His presence. There is even more to be said for how this Good Shepherd comes to restore and to save His people. He comes humbly, riding on a  donkey. He comes obediently, submitting not to His own will but to the will of His Father. He comes as the least of all, to a cross and to a tomb. He comes in glory, resurrected, renewed and restored so that all of the wishes of our eternal struggle with sin are filled with overflowing grace - He comes, friends - to you. Will you wish and pray with me that our hearts and the hearts of this failing world will accept He who comes, in the name of the Lord?