Be patient with God
Frank Boreham, one of my favourite authors, in his essay The Queen Bee urges us to have patience with God. Indeed! It's good advice to an age so full of demands. It's good advice to any age, for have we not always been full of demands. In fairness, there are millions down the ages that have suffered so much for so long that we who have so much should be slow to say to, "Hold your tongues!"
I don't say it's always the case but it's those of us who have known for a long time what it is to be treated well that find ourselves quickly irritated if we don't get just what we have come to fully expect as our rights. It's the poor and the plundered poor that have developed "the long long patience" that Edwin Markham spoke of.
It's the people well enough off and who have the luxury of putting God in the pillory that especially need to be urged to be patient with God, for this "stand-and-deliver" attitude is ugly as well as unjustified in our cases. I can understand the pop group Queen demanding "I want it All and I want it now!" and I've no doubt that they express the attitude of millions but I wasn't thinking of pure and simple hedonists.
God is engaged in an eternal enterprise that affects the darkest corridors of the farthest reaches of the universe and the plundered poor of all the ages who never had a chance to live. And when he's done, not only will all who share in that life that is brimful and overflowing with life be gob-smacked, they'll thank him for "taking his time" so that they'd be ready to appreciate and absorb it all. They'll look back at what hedonists clamored for in that gluttonous, smash-and-grab way and turn and thank God again for pursuing his purpose regardless of the clamoring.
Why does he wait so long? Why is he so slow in coming to my aid? Depending on the circumstances such questions make good sense and more than one psalmist sobbed them out as did apocalyptic martyrs—"How long O Lord?" But he knows what he's about and he will work as he works and those of us with less reason to moan than those who know deprivation and loss up close and personal—we'll not keep him from his purpose. He will not be buffaloed by claims that he doesn't care; he will simply say, I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE! And in the end we will be glad beyond our ability to express it.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.