As my wife and I anticipate the birth of our son in only a few days, my thoughts have often turned to the Lord’s manifold purposes in seasons of waiting—waiting for an answer to prayer, for an open door, for healing, for relief, for employment, for retirement, for a child to come, for a child to return, and all else between.

In the beginning, the Lord God breathed upon a young world those words befitting the creation of Adam, the first man: “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18). As Christians, so must we eschew isolation and seek rather to gather regularly as the body of Christ.