More often than I’d care to admit, I find that I am in a hurry. Now, it’s not the typical kind of hurrying--rushing to get into the “15 items or less lane” at the grocery story, speeding through traffic, or running around juggling four or five tasks at a time. It’s more an inability to be present to my life as it is right now. So often I find that no matter the circumstances, I’m hurrying through, wondering or worrying, as the case may be, what is next.
This pattern of hurrying through life to the “next event” seems fairly typical and ingrained from a young age. When I was a child, I couldn’t wait to be a teenager. When I was a teenager, I couldn’t wait to be in college. When I was in college, I couldn’t wait to be a graduate student. When I was a graduate student, I couldn’t wait to be a professional. I look back on those hurried days now, and lament that I rushed through them so quickly.
Of course, our efficiency-driven society doesn’t help our propensity towards hurrying through life. We live in an “instant” society, and our increasingly rapid technological developments only add to our impatience when things are not achieved instantaneously. While technology has greatly improved many aspects of our lives and I certainly wouldn’t want to go backwards, I recognize that my own propensity to hurry, coupled with a society that moves at ever-quickening speeds, can be very detrimental for the spiritual life. How often I find myself disappointed with God when my prayers are not answered instantly; how angry I become when the smallest glitch slows my achievement of personal goals; how frustrated and impatient I become with others when their own “improvement” doesn’t move at my break-neck speed.
The biblical picture couldn’t be more different from our hurried lives. God is never in a hurry. Abraham, for example, received the promise of an heir twenty-five years before he actually laid eyes on Isaac. Joseph had a dream as a seventeen year old young man that his brothers would one day bow down to him. Yet it was countless years and many difficulties later that his brothers would come and kneel before him, asking for food. Moses was eighty years old--long past his prime of life--when God appeared to him in the burning bush and called him to deliver the children of Israel. David was anointed king by Samuel as a young boy tending his father’s flocks, long before he finally ascended to the throne. And Jesus spent thirty years in relative obscurity, not involved in public ministry, and only three years announcing the kingdom and God’s rule in his life and ministry.
From our perspective, it is difficult to understand why God wasn’t more in a hurry rushing to accomplish the plans and purposes, not only in these individuals’ lives, but also in the plan of redemption. The Messiah was prophesied hundreds of years before he actually arrived on the scene. We cannot help but ask why God seems to move so slowly?
In his second letter, what is considered Peter’s last will and testament, he discusses the slowness of God in relation to the Second Coming. Many arose even in Peter’s time asking why God was so slow when it came to delivering on his promise of an eternal kingdom. They began to mock God assuming that “as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be.” Not so, Peter argues, for the slowness of God is in fact our salvation. “The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance....Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless, and regard the patience of our Lord to be salvation” (2 Peter 3:9, 14-15).
The long, slow, work of God is not to torment those of us who find ourselves in a hurry, wondering what’s next. Rather, God’s forbearance and patience with us--even those of us in a hurry--is for our good. God’s seemingly slow movement gives us ample opportunity to be present to our lives allowing the journey to shape us and mold us into the people we are designed to be. In addition, God’s timetable gives us more opportunity to be diligent in godliness not just for our own salvation, but so that our lives would give witness to others in need of God’s salvation. As we live in the realm of God’s patience, “looking” as Peter says, “for a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells,” we live to enfold others into the forbearance of God.
Margaret Manning is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Seattle, Washington.
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