Waiting

“But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness.”  (II Peter 3:8-9a NIV)

The one thing I hate when I am sitting in front of my computer is the spinning cog or rainbow, or the rotating hourglass.  That means waiting, perhaps as long as a few minutes.  Ugh, I hate it!  This from a guy who used a typewriter in college, who waited every day for the morning paper to read the news, and who made once-a-week phone calls on a payphone to his mom!

Our high-tech society has speeded up everything and I think, as has mine, people’s impatience has increased right along with it.  We expect our computers to work fast, checkout lines to move quickly, and information to be immediately available to us.  We have little patience with slowness.  

Yesterday, I was reading in Jeremiah about God’s punishment of Judah, telling them they would be exiled to Babylon for 70 years.  That number just stopped me.  Seventy years is practically a full lifetime.  His promise was that after 70 years, they would come back.  Can you imagine being told to wait 70 years to return home, or 40 years, as in the case of the Israelites wandering in the desert?  Think of how long that actually is. What will your life look like in 70 years or 40 years, even 10 years?  

So, is it a surprise that we often get impatient with God when He does not act quickly enough for us?  We have grown so accustom to quick answers and quick solutions that we expect the same from Him.  

Yet we must understand God is not governed by our changing world.  He does not necessarily move faster just because our world does.  He is the same as He was at the time of Jeremiah, and He will remain the same in the years and generations to come.  He does not view time in the same way we do.  Does a thousand years seem like a day to you?  

This is the God we serve and to avoid being continually frustrated, we must understand we will not always receive a quick answer, or be changed overnight.  As the Psalmist says,  “I wait for you, O LORD; you will answer, O Lord my God.” (Psalm 38:15)  But be prepared to wait longer than you might want.

© Jim Musser 2014