Five Years of Waiting

December 9, 2025

“Watch out for immoral and ungodly people like Esau, who sold his future blessing for only one meal.” —Hebrews 12:16

My wife and I have a friend who was pregnant. She was eight months along and her belly looked so big on such a small person. We were out to dinner with her and she clearly was ready to have her baby. She would have to wait a little longer.

But not as long as the coelacanth. A giant fish still around from dinosaur times. The pregnancy in the fish lasts about five years. The five-year gestation is the longest for any fish or animal. And they have live births.

Coelacanths were thought to be extinct until they were found off South Africa in 1938. They are a slow moving, people-sized fish of the deep, nicknamed the “living fossil.” They can live for 100 years.

Coelacanths grow at a remarkably slow pace. Females don’t hit sexual maturity until their late 50s and males are sexually mature at 40 to 69 years. They age slowly like other dwellers of the deep, including sharks and rays.

So, compared to these fish nine months doesn’t seem so bad. Easy to say if you’re not the one pregnant. No one likes to wait. And not just nine months but any time when we want to see something happen.

Well, almost no one. I just read a book where the author made his case for slowing down and seeking out the slowest lane, at the check-out or on the highway. I may try the check-out lane at a store just to prove to my wife I can do it. But only once.

Hebrews 12:16 tells us Watch out for immoral and ungodly people like Esau, who sold his future blessing for only one meal. Esau is the example of someone who was unwilling to wait and God says he was immoral. We should watch out that we don’t end up like him because we couldn’t wait.

The blessing Esau sold for a warm meal included: being head of the family, a special blessing when his father died and a double share of all the assets. It seems absurd to give all that up. But what can’t you wait for? The right person to marry. The right job to open up. The right time to move.

We must wait for the pain to lessen, the broken heart to heal, the illness to end, the prodigal to come home. And know that while we wait—God works. He is busy orchestrating events so that at the right time the waiting will end.

And the blessing will come.