I could rename this “Jive at Five” or “Thrive at Five” or … give me your ideas … this morning because Tori, “bless her heart,” is still on Indianapolis time (and her “aunt” she stayed with is an early riser). And, when Tori wants to get up, we get up. She’s rather insistent about it. That got me thinking about God’s timing, and our expectations, sometimes conflict.
Ecclesiastes 3:1 – “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.”
Isaiah 60:22 – “When the time is right, I, the Lord, will make it happen.”
Psalm 27:14 – “Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.”
2 Peter 3:8 – “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.”
This morning, I found myself thinking about how often my preferred timing and God’s timing seem to differ. I like things to happen promptly. I appreciate clear plans, visible progress, and measurable results. I prefer answers sooner rather than later. When facing uncertainty, I want clarity. When waiting, I would like to know exactly how long the wait will last.
Yet Scripture repeatedly reminds us that God operates according to a different clock. At the “right” time, God will act. Things will fall into place at the “right” season. And God’s calendar looks nothing like ours. The one on my desk says, “2026.” God’s reads, “The next 1,000 years.” How do we deal with that?
The psalmist offers us this truth: “Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord” The command is repeated in the same psalm because waiting is difficult. Uncertainty plays, or preys, on our minds. We want action. God often invites patience.
All of this can be hard to remember when our prayers seem unanswered, when our dreams remain unrealized, or when God appears silent. But – and here’s the thing – when I look back, I can see moments when I begged God to hurry. At the time, delays felt frustrating and I wondered whether God even heard me. Later, many of those delays revealed themselves as gifts. God hadn’t forgotten me. God was preparing something I couldn’t yet see.
The challenge, of course, is that we usually understand God’s timing only in hindsight. For now, we wait. We can choose frustration, or we can trust. We can scream into the silence, or we can listen. We can demand answers according to our wants, or we can remember that the God who governs the stars and seasons is never late. We can accept that perhaps we won’t fully understand today, but it will be made clear one day.
Perhaps faith isn’t learning how to speed up God’s clock. Perhaps faith is learning how to trust it. Even when the morning arrives earlier than expected.
Prayer: Lord, I confess that I often want life to unfold according to my schedule. Teach me the patience to wait when answers seem delayed and the faith to trust your timing when I can’t understand it. Give me strength to wait, courage to trust, and peace to rest in the knowledge that you make all things happen at the right time. Amen.
