Patience with God

With churches in Gettysburg, Onida, and Agar, I make the trip from Gettysburg to Onida and back quite a bit.  That requires me to travel most of the way on Highway 83.  As you may know, that highway has had construction work being done on it for the last couple of months.  That means there are several places where you have to stop as you go along that road.  It was down to three the last time I took that road, although it’s been as many as five.  Sometimes it’s just a stop sign, and you only stop for a second.  Sometimes, however, it’s a traffic light, and if you get there at the wrong time you may be waiting for three or four minutes.

When you think about it, three or four minutes is not a very long time.  But it seems like a very long time if you’re stuck at a traffic light for that period of time.  And if you get to all three of them at the wrong time, you can add ten to fifteen minutes to your trip.  Again, when you think about it, that’s not a terribly long time.  But if you’re in a hurry, or you’re an impatient person like I tend to be, it seems like a long time.

As I thought about this, I thought that maybe God wants me to use that time somehow.  I’m not saying God decided there should be traffic lights on highway 83, but the Bible tells us that God can work all things for the good of those who love him.  “All things” must include traffic lights, right?  So, how could I use the time waiting at traffic lights to my benefit?

Well, one obvious thing I can do is work on my patience.  As I said above, I tend to be kind of an impatient person sometimes.  And while that’s not all bad, it’s certainly not all good, either.  After all, the Bible tells us that love is patient.  

And I think that includes being patient with God.  You know, it’s easy to get impatient with God.  We see a lot of things going on in the world, and we don’t think things should be that way.  Sometimes we see things going on in our own lives, or in the lives of our loved ones, and we don’t think things should be that way, either.  And we ask God to do something about it.  And--nothing seems to happen.  And we don’t understand why.  And so, we get impatient with God.  We say, “Come on, God, do something?  Can’t you see what’s going on?  Don’t you care?  Are you, maybe, not even there at all?”

We need to be patient with God.  God has plans and purposes we know nothing about.  And God is a very long-term God.  Yes, God cares about what’s happening now, but God also cares about what’s happening a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand years from now.  You and I really have no conception of ten thousand years--recorded human history only goes back about five thousand years.  It’s entirely possible that all those “things” that are going on now, the things that we don’t think should be that way, are contributing to something that’s going to work out tremendously well at some future time.  Something that we know nothing about and can know nothing about, but something for which God has already worked out all the details.

So if things are not going the way you think they should, be patient.  Be patient with yourself.  And be patient with God.  Trust that God knows what He’s doing.  Trust that God has plans and purposes you don’t know about.  And trust that God will work all things for the good of those who love him.