A newborn is hungry when she’s hungry. After all, that moment of need fills up the entirely of her life. She’s been alive all of a few hours, and her hunger has consumed most of her time on this earth.
For a two-year-old, asking him to wait a month for Grandma to come visit is 1/24 of his life. The time is so long he can’t imagine it.
What about a being who has existed forever? A hundred years is a blip in comparison to the rest of his life. A thousand years is hardly a bigger blip. A million…we get the point.
2 Peter 3:9 tells us:
“The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”
God’s patience is different from ours, because he works on a different timescale. He blinks, looks around, and if a decade has passed, it’s only been a moment to him.
1 Timothy 6:16 describes God.
“Who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see…”
We can’t put God in our pocket. He won’t fit. We have to see a wider God, one who stretches from one end of the sky to the other, one who lived in our yesterday, fulfills the present moment, and forms the future in the moment of his desire.
And he does it in his own good time.
John 14:6 gives us our promise.
“Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’ ”
John 17:22 assures us it is ours.
“The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one.”
We can never fathom the true extent of God’s patience, because we are still newborns in comparison to him. However, he will always be patient with us. He will be true to the promises in his Word. All we need to do is believe.
God’s not in a rush, and we shouldn’t be, either.
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