Hold On

This week we’re looking at the story of the Golden Calf-or what happens when people get tired of waiting and wandering the desert.

None of us like to wait. And most of us do not wait well–which explains a lot about some of the bad behavior we’ve seen from people during the last six months.

We know a little bit about what the children of Israel were feeling. It’s a place we’ve all been–a place where we feel utterly lost and clueless as to what to do or where to go next.

But perhaps we’ve never felt as close to those children of Israel wandering in the desert and waiting on Moses to come down from the mountain more than we do in 2020. We are more than weary of wandering around in this pandemic with no end in sight–tired of waiting on the promised land of life as we used to know it.

The last thing we want to do is take the path of the Israelites and decide to create our own gods–a bunch of false idols.

Don’t do it, y’all. Those idols (money, youth, busyness, never come through for us in the end, and God always does.

As the lead singer of the Alabama Shakes tells us:

You gotta wait! You gotta wait.

Then she echoes our own response to that call

But I don’t wanna wait!

Fortunately “I don’t wanna” is not the way the song ends, but with its title words. Hold on. Hold on.


Hold on y’all. Don’t be tempted to create your own idols or gods to get you through. Our God is an awesome God who is at work in ways we can’t always see or feel, but we can be assured that we are never alone.

Hold on.


I create a playlist to correspond to the scripture of the week. Hold On is just one of the songs on the Golden Calf playlist.


Rev. Anne Russ is an ordained pastor in the Presbyterian Church (USA), currently based in New York City. Doubting Believer provides tools and encouragement for the rollercoaster ride of your faith journey. Follow me on Facebook , Instagram and YouTube. You can also follow on TikTok. Get emails to keep up with all that is happening.

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