The Watchtower

Winds howled through the broken stones of the old watchtower, but Eli didn’t flinch. He had climbed those steps every morning for months, eyes fixed on the horizon, heart aching for a word from God. The city below him groaned under injustice, but the heavens above remained quiet.

Anger had come first—raw, righteous, and loud. “How long, Lord?” he had cried. “How long will You let this go on?” But the skies had offered no reply. Just silence. And yet, Eli returned. Not because he heard anything, but because he still believed Someone was listening.

In the stillness, he began to notice things. The way the sun rose faithfully, even when the people didn’t. The way the wind whispered through the trees like a breath too soft to catch. He started to wonder if maybe God wasn’t absent—just speaking in a language he hadn’t learned to hear.

Then one morning, as the mist curled low over the hills, something stirred in his spirit. Not a voice, not a vision—just a knowing. A whisper that said, “Write the vision. Make it plain.” He didn’t understand it fully, but he obeyed. He wrote what he saw, what he hoped, what he believed.

Friends called him foolish. “You’re wasting your time,” they said. “God’s not coming.” But Eli kept writing. He wrote of justice rolling like a river, of mercy rising like the dawn. He wrote of a God who sees, who waits, who acts in His own time.

And when doubt crept in, Eli climbed higher. He stood at the edge of the tower and whispered the words again: “Though it linger, wait for it.” He didn’t know when the vision would come to pass—but he knew it would. Because the One who promised was faithful.

In time, the scrolls he wrote began to spread. People read them in secret, then in public. They began to hope again. Not because their circumstances changed—but because their hearts did. They remembered that faith wasn’t about seeing. It was about standing.

The day Eli passed, a child climbed the tower in his place. She found one of his scrolls tucked beneath a stone. She read it aloud, voice trembling: “The righteous will live by faith.” And in that moment, the city below began to breathe again.

Hope had returned—not with thunder, but with truth. And the watchtower stood, not as a monument to a man, but to a message:

Wait. Faith.