Charles H. Spurgeon on Psalms 130:5

I wait for the LORD. Waiting is a great part of life's discipline, and therefore God often exercises the grace of waiting. Waiting has four purposes. It practises the patience of faith. It gives time for preparation for the coming gift. It makes the blessing the sweeter when it arrives. And it shows the sovereignty of God, —to give just when and just as he pleases. It may be difficult to define exactly what the Psalmist had in his mind when he said, "I wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope. My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning." It may have been the Messiah, whose coming was a thing close at hand to the mind of the ancient Jews, just as the Second Advent is to us. It may have been some special interposition of Divine Providence. But more probably, looking at the place which it occupies, and at the whole tenor of the Psalm, and its line of thought, "The Lord" he waited for so intently was that full sense of safety, peace, and love which God's felt presence gives, and which is, indeed, nothing else but the coming of the Lord most sensibly and palpably into an anxious and longing heart. The picture of the waiting man is a striking one. It is as of one on the ridge of a journey, looking onward on his way, standing on tiptoe, and therefore needing something to lean on, and to support him. "I wait for the Lord", —spiritually, with my deepest thoughts —in the very centre of my being —"I wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait." And I rest, I stay myself on what thou, O Lord, hast said. "My soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope." In all your waitings remember two things: Let it not be so much the event which you wait for, as the Lord of the event; the Lord in the event. And take care that you have a promise underneath you, —"In his word do I hope", —else "waiting" will be too much for you, and after all it may be in vain. —James Vaughan.