Waiting on a Slow God

I hate waiting. When we lived in Singapore cars were too expensive so we rode the MRT. Fast, clean and efficient, the trains carry people from varied economic, racial and religious backgrounds. Everyone is equal on the train. It’s awesome.

The one drawback is, you have to learn to wait.

If you miss the train, you wait. If you have a meeting in 25 minutes and your train ride is 30, you’re going to be late. You can’t drive faster. You can’t fix it. All you can do is stand on the train and wait.

I hate waiting.

What really sucks is God is SO SLOOOOOOOOOW!

Just ask Abraham. That poor dude waited forever. He waited so long he decided to fix the problem himself, which really didn’t fix anything at all.

I’m caught in the tension between how long we’re supposed to wait for God and when he expects us to take a little initiative. Saul tried to take initiative but that didn’t work out too well.

In the story of Lazarus Jesus was slow. He seemed to be uncaringly slow. But he wasn’t late.

Through the death of Lazarus, we gained a new understanding of who Christ is. More than just a healer, he has power over death. He was slow, but he wasn’t late.

There are things in life that we can’t control. There’s nothing we can do to fix them. So we fret and worry and agonize.

I hate waiting, but worrying is like hoping for the train to go faster. Sometimes all we can do is wait and trust God will show up, in time. Sometimes he doesn’t seem to.

But I’ll try to trust that, like Jesus, he’s just slow, not late.