Children’s Sermon

Romans 8:12-25

Learning to Wait

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Romans 8:12-25
Learning to Wait

By Lois Parker Edstrom

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The great blue heron is a large bird standing almost four feet tall and having a wing span of six feet. (Show picture and give children a reference as to the size of this bird.) An outstanding thing about the heron is its patience. It stands, perfectly still, in a pond or lake for long periods of time, waiting for a fish to swim by. It may be windy. It may be raining or even snowing, but the heron, although it appears to be uncomfortable, continues fishing, waiting to catch his dinner.

If you have fished, you know that you don’t just toss your line into the water and pull out a fish – it is an activity that requires patience. You must wait and while you wait you might get uncomfortable. The weather might be too hot, there may be mosquitoes, or it may be raining, causing you to get wet and cold.

The Bible instructs us to develop patience. We all have times when we must deal with difficult and uncomfortable things. We may have trouble understanding our homework, someone may say something that hurts us, or we may be ill and not feeling well.

When we have difficult experiences and feel frustrated or sad, we are instructed to always hang onto hope – God’s promise of care for his children. Hope is not something we see, but we can feel it – hope helps us to learn to wait and become more patient. The Bible says, “But if we hope for that which we don’t see, we wait for it with patience” (8:25).

In all things, we have hope because we are “…the children of God…” (8:19). So when you pray, be patient. Pray, be patient, and trust that God loves you and will help you.

Scripture quotations from the World English Bible