"The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance."
I am not a very patient person. When my wife and I start watching a new TV series on Netflix I will go to Wikipedia and read up on all the plot line developments well before we actually watch it. Waiting to find out can sometimes make it not enjoyable to me. This is probably not entirely healthy. And it annoys my wife.
We all struggle with waiting on things. So much of life seems stuck in that endless purgatory of waiting. Waiting for someone else to get back to us, waiting to be a bit older, or waiting to look a bit younger, waiting for a raise, or waiting for the end of the day so you can finally get some sleep. Whatever it is, we don't like it. We want what we want and we want it now!
The hardest things to wait for are those things that are most important to us. And the longer life goes on, the more stressful and heart wrenching the waiting can be. One good friend of mine is a career military man with a beautiful wife and two precious daughters. He has been sent overseas for many months at a time, away from his family. I cannot imagine the toll of that sort of waiting.
When we observe the condition of the world around us, and the hearts and lives of so many of the people who inhabit it, we can often find ourselves wondering how much longer we have to wait on God to finally make an appearance. For Him to swoop in and fix all this crap up, to answer all those difficult questions, to set things RIGHT.
If you want to know why God seems slow in keeping His promise, Peter has a pretty powerful insight for us. God is not ready to close the book on you yet.
When we look at this broken world we cry out for justice, and rightfully so, our hearts should cry out against the sins we see. But here is what we never admit to ourselves. Justice is coming for us as well. What we refuse to accept is that God is not going to just deal with those things that we do not like, He is going to deal with us as well.
Us: God, why don't you stop, and PUNISH, those human traffickers who kidnap and sell children.
God: So you want me to come and deal with sexual sin and bring down the hammer?
Us: Yes what is taking you so long!
God: Ok, well, I guess you need to line up for judgement then
US: Whoa whoa whoa. I am talking about those really bad people, who take advantage of other people, who rob their innocence, who treat people like objects.
God: So am I. Line up with them
See, we don't know what we are calling for. God is a righteous and just God. And he desperately loves you and me. He is crying out to each of us. Crying out for us to run to the cross, to repent and turn to Him. And so many are yet shuttering our ears to that call. He loves this world too much to close the book before He has given each of us every single chance.
God is not slow because He has forgotten you. He is "slow" because He can't stop thinking about you.
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