Time is a funny thing. Sometimes it feels as if it rushes by, faster than we can keep up with it, and other times it drags along, feeling slower than molasses. “Time flies when you’re having fun,” so the saying goes. And even so, the opposite is just as true. When we’re bored or waiting, time seems to stand still. Despite the fact that time passes more quickly the older we are (which makes sense when we realize that, as we age, a day is an increasingly smaller percentage of our lived experience), the drudgery of waiting is not exclusive to the young. When we are waiting on an expected event, a day can feel like an eternity, no matter our age.
Life is
full of waiting. Whether it’s waiting for something to end or something to
begin, waiting to hear from someone or to be able to share good news, waiting
to be a certain age or meet a certain person, we all know what it’s like to
wait. And the Christian life is no exception. Sometimes (a lot of times) we
have to wait on the Lord. He operates according to His perfect timeline
established in His perfect wisdom, and that timeline doesn’t always match up
with our own. And sometimes while we’re waiting, it can seem like He is absent,
or at least silent, and we find ourselves not only waiting for Him to move but
also waiting for Him to speak.
In these
seasons of waiting on the Lord, we can turn to His Word and be reassured that
He has spoken as we contemplate what He has revealed to us there about Himself.
But there are other parts of Scripture that are encouraging in a different way,
if only we have the eyes to see them.
I don’t
know about you, but when I read the Bible, especially the narrative portions, I
can easily lose sight of how much time is represented in just a few chapters. We
can read the entire story of someone’s life in just a couple hours or even a
few minutes, and we can forget that these people actually lived through every
single day of their lives, one day at a time.
Take
Abraham, for instance. In Genesis 12:3-4, we see that God promises, “I will
make of you a great nation,” and that Abraham is seventy-five years old when he
steps out in faith, believing this promise, and heads to Canaan. Just four
chapters later, he becomes a father to Ishmael, but we see in Genesis 16:16
that he was eighty-six years old at the time. That’s eleven years or over four
thousand days, and he still had fourteen more years to wait before the arrival
of Isaac. He was one hundred years old when Isaac was born, so he had waited
twenty-five years, a quarter of a century, from the time of God’s promise to
the arrival of his wife’s son (See Genesis 21:5).
Imagine
being told that you would be a father to many nations and then waiting day
after day and year after year for even the physical possibility of that
promise’s fulfillment to become a reality.
Abraham’s
great-grandson, Joseph, had a dream as a teenager that he would rule over his
brothers, but through a long series of events, he ended up unjustly imprisoned in
Egypt. While in prison, he accurately interpreted the dreams of two men who had
served in Pharoah’s household, asking the one who would be restored to his
position to put in a good word for him to Pharoah. In Genesis 41:1, we read
that it was only “after two whole years” that the man remembered Joseph,
leading to Joseph’s release from prison and appointment to the second-highest
position in the land, the position from which he would in fact rule over his
brothers, as his teenage dream had foretold.
Imagine being
stuck in prison for something you didn’t do, having a rare chance to do a favor
for someone who was about to be released, asking that person to remember you,
and then thinking every day, “Maybe today is the day,” for two whole years
before finally being released.
Or consider
Hannah. Married to a man who had another wife, Hannah was tormented by this
more fertile woman because of her own childlessness. The bullying was so severe
that “Hannah wept and would not eat,” and on top of that her husband just
didn’t understand, asking, “Why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than
ten sons?” (1 Samuel 1:7-8). We read that this “went on year by year” (1 Samuel
1:7), and though we’re not told exactly how many years she waited for a child,
we see that “in due time” she conceived after beseeching the Lord (1 Samuel
1:20).
Imagine
longing for a child month after month only to be provoked by your husband’s
other wife who had the very thing you wanted, and on top of that to be met with
guilt-tripping, unsympathetic questions from your husband as your pain and
desire grew year after year after year.
And then
there’s Elijah. We first meet Elijah in 1 Kings 17 when the Lord uses him to
prophecy to King Ahab that there will be a severe drought in the land. In verse
2, “the word of the LORD came to him,” directing him to stay by the brook
Cherith, which he did until the brook dried up from lack of rain. Then in verse
8, “the word of the LORD came to him,” sending him to Zarephath where he was
provided for by a widow and her son, and we see in verse 16 that they did not
run out of food “according to the word of the LORD that he spoke by Elijah.” Eventually,
the son died, and Elijah called out to God, asking him to bring the boy back to
life (v. 21). “And the LORD listened to the voice of Elijah. And the life of
the child came into him again, and he revived” (v. 22). Chapter 17 ends with
the widow telling Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the
word of the LORD in your mouth is truth” (v. 24).
It seems
from chapter 17 that Elijah and God had a pretty open and regular line of
communication; even the first verse of chapter 18 says, “the word of the LORD
came to Elijah.” But before this phrase, there is another phrase that we could
easily glance over without a second thought but that changes the dynamics of
the story significantly: “After many days.” We’re not sure exactly how many,
but between the end of chapter 17 and the beginning of chapter 18, many days
passed in which Elijah presumably did not hear the word of the LORD.
Imagine
having God speak to you, sending you to inform a king what was going to happen
in the future, telling you where to go to survive, answering your request to
bring someone back from the dead, and then having Him go silent for day after
day before you hear His word again.
So often we
read these accounts as if the people involved knew what we know—how the story
would play out. But they didn’t. This was their actual life. Each and every one
of those “many days” was a full day lived by Elijah. Every “year by year” was a
year that Hannah lived and thought and felt. Every day of “two whole years” was
a day Joseph lived and breathed and wondered, not knowing if he would ever get
out of prison. Every day of twenty-five years was a day that Abraham lived and waited
to see a child conceived with his wife be born. Every day they woke up not
knowing what the day would bring, and every day they had to depend on God to sustain
them as they waited.
If we keep
a sense of time as we read through Scripture, we will see how time and again
people like Abraham and Joseph and Hannah and Elijah waited on God either to
act or speak or fulfill His promise. And in doing so we can be mindful of many
things. We can be encouraged by the perseverance and steadfastness of God’s
people as they waited on Him. We can learn the dangers of trying to take
matters into our own hands when we grow tired of waiting. And above all, we can
see God’s faithfulness as He worked, seemingly behind the scenes, to bring
about His perfect plan for His people’s lives. And because we know He never
changes, we can trust that He is doing the same for us. While we wait, He is
active. While we wait, He is with us. And just as the men and women in the
Bible waited through seemingly endless days of the unknown and made it through,
so can we, depending all the days in our lives on God’s goodness and grace.
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