Too Long in When God Takes Too Long?

Today’s Scripture Readings:

OT: Job 25-26NT:

John 8W&W:

Psalm 69.19-28

Tomorrow’s Scripture Readings:

OT: Job 27-28

NT: John 9

W&W: Psalm 69.29-36

Today’s Reflection:

I won’t be posting tomorrow, so I went ahead and put tomorrow’s scripture readings in ahead of time. Today – much to Jenny’s relief – I am going to finish up my comments from Joseph Bentz’s book, When God Takes Too Long. In the last third of the book, Bentz provides “Perspectives on Time and God’s Timing.” Enjoy the excerpts below (page numbers appear before each excerpt):

100: We live in a culture tyrannized by time. Adopting a healthier attitude toward time will require us to break our tradition of going faster and faster.

102: Honore: Our culture’s love of speed has turned into an addiction, a kind of idolatry. Even when speed starts to backfire, we invoke the go-faster gospel…

103: It’s a mistake to take our own perception of time as the norm. God views time differently than we do.

105: Time measurements are arbitrary, we don’t have to enslave ourselves to them.

107: It only takes 8 minutes for a sunbeam to travel the 93 million miles from the surface of the sun to the earth. However the surface of the sun is not the start of that light beam’s journey. It actually started in the sun’s center… The solar core is so dense that a single photon, the fundamental unit of light, can’t go even a fraction of a millimeter before banging into some subatomic particle… As a result it can take hundreds of thousands of years for a photon to ricochet its way nearly half a million miles to the sun’s surface… And I’m tempted to lose heart if God makes me wait a few days or weeks before answering my prayer…

108: Sometimes the wait seems so long because our vision of something is far ahead of the reality. We have no choice but to wait patiently while reality catches up to the vision.

114: Robert Bly: “Driving Late to Town to Mail a Letter” It’s a cold and snowy night. The main street is deserted.The only things moving are swirls of snow. As I lift the mailbox door, I feel its cold iron. There is a privacy I love in this snowy night. Driving around, I will waste more time.

120: “Life is elsewhere.” I don’t want that to be my theme…

122-123: Throughout Scripture waiting is described not as a passive state but as a time of preparation, training, and staying the course as we head toward the eternal prize that awaits us.

124: Let the waiting accomplish its purpose. Just as the runner does not want to step onto the track unprepared, neither should we try to manipulate God into cutting short our time of preparation to rush us to the destination to which he is carefully leading us.

124-125: “Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.” (James 1.2-4, The Message, emphasis added)

126: Often the destination to which God leads us is not a place but a change in character!

127-135: What can Christians do to make sure we make it to the finish line? Strip away all distractions, and focus all your energy on the goal of following him regardless of the changing circumstances that surround you.Allow other Christians and heroes of the faith to serve as your role models and as encouragers as you endure the long race.

139-140: Hebrews 11.39-40, TM: “Not one of these people, even though their lives of faith were exemplary, got their hands on what was promised. God had a better plan for us: that their faith and our faith would come together to make one completed whole. Their lives of faith not complete apart from ours.”

140-141: The experience of Moses and Joshua help us appreciate the fact that we are not individuals in this journey. We complete each other’s work… My work is not complete without those who follow me. I need to invest through the people of God!

146: Ripple effect: When it’s over, it isn’t over.

150: God Has All the Time in the World – and More: An Eternal Perspective on Waiting

This Week’s Scripture to Memorize:

Work on putting all of Isaiah 53 together:

1 Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?

2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

3 He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

4 Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted.

5 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

7 He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.

8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away. And who can speak of his descendants? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was stricken.

9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.

10 Yet it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.

11 After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities.

12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.