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...

{nothing}

There are some days that the words just won't come.

Maybe it is because I let the busyness of life win. Perhaps I simply have nothing to say...

...or maybe it is really because there are days when I fear what is inside, and somehow believe that if I let it out, these things I don't even know I want to set free will define me. judge me. find me wanting.

On these days, perhaps it is best to let someone else do the talking for me. Who better than Madeleine L'Engle?

I will have nothing to do with a God who cares only occasionally. I need a God who is with us always, everywhere, in the deepest depths as well as the highest heights. It is when things go wrong, when good things do not happen, when our prayers seem to have been lost, that God is most present. We do not need the sheltering wings when things go smoothly. We are closest to God in the darkness, stumbling along blindly. —Madeleine L'Engle

Where would I be without a full-time God?

I don't think I want to know.

Simple ≠ Easy

And now, O Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in you. —Psalm 39:7

Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. —Psalm 42:11

The questions in these verses remind me of that old Johnny Carson skit where he wore a turban and held a piece of paper to his forehead with an answer on it. When the question was revealed, the answer was most always hilarious.

But while they all were similarly funny, for these questions posed by the Psalmists, Johnny would only need one card, and on it would be written, Hope in God.

What about cancer in a little body? Hope in God.

Other illness in my family? Hope in God.

Things not turning out as I'd planned? Hope in God.

The turbulence in the world? Hope in God.

Tsunamis, earthquakes, floods...? Hope in God.

Unanswered prayers and unrealized dreams? Hope in God.

It seems simple, almost formulaic, but while the answer is simple, it is far from easy—anything but easy. Standing rock solid on my hope in God, regardless of what I wait for not arriving, regardless of the turmoil going on in and around me, regardless of all the things that would serve to push me off this sometimes tiny foundation of hope, is not easy.

But whoever said that life was going to be easy? Not my mom, and certainly not Jesus... who said, "In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world." {John 16:33}

Who better to put our hope in than the One who already faced down the world and won?

faithful...

i made this slide for PORTICO's Connect.One.Five for this Sunday.

i had no idea how much i would need it today...