A Clock of a Different Kind

But you must not forget this one thing, dear friends: A day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day. The Lord isn’t really being slow about his promise, as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent. {2 Peter 3:8,9}

It doesn't look like we humans have changed all that much since Peter wrote those words shortly after Jesus' death. We still want what we want, when we want it. And if we have to wait longer then we deem necessary, things begin to fall apart.

The folks Peter is writing to are waiting. Waiting for God to keep His promises. Waiting for Him to move, and to fulfill that which some of them heard from Jesus' own lips.

But nothing happens.

Well, not exactly nothing. Life still went on, but what they were waiting for didn't happen.

And while they are waiting in the nothingness, questions and doubts walked right in through the open door.

But Peter reminds them—and us—that God has a different kind of clock and calendar than we do. A different plan. He does things His way, and is not limited by human understanding, or merely what His eyes can see.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. {Isaiah 55:8,9}

It's not my job to understand and to know the full timing of God's plan in my life or in the world. My job is to trust. To be faithful. To love justice and mercy and to show them to the world. To believe that regardless what my eyes see, God is still in charge, will keep His promises, and has a plan that isn't for me to worry about.

My job is to be faithful...