- Jun 29, 2019
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There aren’t many things in this world that are instant. You can have instant coffee; you can flick a switch and a light goes on; you can pull the trigger of a gun and the bullet instantly flies out on its way. Relatively speaking, it takes less time to destroy something than it did to build it up. It takes less time to kill a person than it does to raise one. Why should these things be?
If we can create something out of thin air, it would be because of magic. But the reality is that none of us are possessed of such magic.
God can act fast if he wants to. It didn’t take long for him to create the various plagues, pestilences, and a sea that turns to red when He was impressing the Hebrews and the Egyptian Pharaoh. It didn’t take Him long to create manna in the wilderness when the Hebrews were en route to the Promised Land. But for us, most things come slowly. Is there some divine reason for it?
There are many passages in the Bible that speak of having patience. It is interesting that Jesus doesn’t harp on the idea of any time lapse, though in the Parable of the Persistent Widow he says in Luke 18:7 “...will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night?”
We can venture guesses as to why God would wait until we call upon Him continuously until He acts. We know that aside from Jesus’ parable referred to above, the Bible implores us to be patient. The Old Testament tells us to wait for the Lord. The New Testament implores us to have patience. But again, what divine purpose would it serve for time to go by before a goal is reached?
Perhaps it’s God’s way of giving us an understanding of what we ask for, followed by an appreciation when God comes through. God doesn’t need for us to understand when and why He does things. Proverbs 3:5 says to not rely on our understanding. But Godhas shown, in passages like Isaiah 1:18, that He is willing for us to reason things out. Since we cannot think in the blink of an eye, it takes time for us to reason and acquire an understanding.
God is not a genie who grants us wishes upon our command, although He could act like a genie if He wanted to. But along that same vein He could have created Adam and Eve to be dolls He could move around. Perhaps that was His original intent until they ate from the Tree of Good and Evil.
God could have killed them off for doing so, and start again creating man in His Image, but he must have said something to the effect of ‘OK, so you now know good and evil. No use wasting that knowledge, so hereafter I will leave it to you to decide what constitutes doing good and evil, you and your offspring and the generations thereafter. And you will be my people and love me, and I will love you, and you will look to me whenever you are undecided as to what amounts to being good and evil. Since it wasn’t my intent that you think for yourselves, the brains I have given you are rather slow in learning, therefore whatever you want to accomplish will take time, since for you it will take time to acquire an appreciation of Me and what I can do for you. And the longer that appreciation takes, the longer it will stay.’
So for us, patience may have a purpose. In due course of our patience we appreciate the situations we are faced with, enough that we would learn to avoid similar situations in the future if they are adverse and be drawn to situations to our liking. Alas, there are some things that will take more time...things such as a lasting peace on earth. We are billions of souls with slow-moving brains who need time to reason things out, so that once a lasting peace is achieved, we will not go back.
If we can create something out of thin air, it would be because of magic. But the reality is that none of us are possessed of such magic.
God can act fast if he wants to. It didn’t take long for him to create the various plagues, pestilences, and a sea that turns to red when He was impressing the Hebrews and the Egyptian Pharaoh. It didn’t take Him long to create manna in the wilderness when the Hebrews were en route to the Promised Land. But for us, most things come slowly. Is there some divine reason for it?
There are many passages in the Bible that speak of having patience. It is interesting that Jesus doesn’t harp on the idea of any time lapse, though in the Parable of the Persistent Widow he says in Luke 18:7 “...will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night?”
We can venture guesses as to why God would wait until we call upon Him continuously until He acts. We know that aside from Jesus’ parable referred to above, the Bible implores us to be patient. The Old Testament tells us to wait for the Lord. The New Testament implores us to have patience. But again, what divine purpose would it serve for time to go by before a goal is reached?
Perhaps it’s God’s way of giving us an understanding of what we ask for, followed by an appreciation when God comes through. God doesn’t need for us to understand when and why He does things. Proverbs 3:5 says to not rely on our understanding. But Godhas shown, in passages like Isaiah 1:18, that He is willing for us to reason things out. Since we cannot think in the blink of an eye, it takes time for us to reason and acquire an understanding.
God is not a genie who grants us wishes upon our command, although He could act like a genie if He wanted to. But along that same vein He could have created Adam and Eve to be dolls He could move around. Perhaps that was His original intent until they ate from the Tree of Good and Evil.
God could have killed them off for doing so, and start again creating man in His Image, but he must have said something to the effect of ‘OK, so you now know good and evil. No use wasting that knowledge, so hereafter I will leave it to you to decide what constitutes doing good and evil, you and your offspring and the generations thereafter. And you will be my people and love me, and I will love you, and you will look to me whenever you are undecided as to what amounts to being good and evil. Since it wasn’t my intent that you think for yourselves, the brains I have given you are rather slow in learning, therefore whatever you want to accomplish will take time, since for you it will take time to acquire an appreciation of Me and what I can do for you. And the longer that appreciation takes, the longer it will stay.’
So for us, patience may have a purpose. In due course of our patience we appreciate the situations we are faced with, enough that we would learn to avoid similar situations in the future if they are adverse and be drawn to situations to our liking. Alas, there are some things that will take more time...things such as a lasting peace on earth. We are billions of souls with slow-moving brains who need time to reason things out, so that once a lasting peace is achieved, we will not go back.
