Freezing rain.

Somewhere between winter weather and spring weather. It’s raining, but it isn’t. It comes down like rain, and it settles on becoming ice along the way. It’s thorough in its icy blast and sheeting. Depending on your perspective, beauty can be found in that tangle of ice, branches, and dead grass. However, if the morning sun decides to come out the next day, it shines through the icy layers with brilliance and clarity. Astounding!

I confess I have fallen victim to a mind and heart full of clutter and the weight of responsibilities this season. That clutter can feel like the tangle and weight of ice and branches that seem off-season. It can take a while to sort things out. And if committing words to paper is the end goal, it can take a long while. Might this be true for you?

Yet (see footnote), He is so kind. I have found His grace in His measure of time. Amid the clutter and distraction and the sorting of what is true, false or a distraction in this past season, the Lord gives those precious moments of awe and joy when He speaks, and I hear Him. In His way and His chosen moments (like rain in the middle of winter). Along the filtering way, He provides me with glimmers of insight into His timing. It’s messy, and yet He shows comfort in it.

As I face the conviction (or is it an accusation?) of being tardy in what God has called me to, there is smiling love in His sense of timing. It is so different from mine. He is in for the long haul, knowing the end from the beginning. The speed of things in our world infiltrates my sense of timing, which opposes the “long haul” of God, encouraging me to chafe against it. Anxious for something to be fixed, sorted, made right and completed (even in myself), I can feel that anxiety about perceived silence from the Lord or a sense of inaction. And this conflicts with the desire to trust His promises of guidance and provision and the stillness needed to hear His voice. Perhaps you are caught in this conflict, as well. Yet, receive the truth in these words:

The Lord is not slow to fulfill His promises as some count slowness.

2 Peter 3:9 (ESV)

The word slow that Peter uses is the Greek word braduno. Its root word is bradus and means “taking time to deliberate, unhurried while still moving forward after considering all the facts.” Peter tells us that we are not to view God’s slowness as He is delaying or being late for an appointed time. If God appears slow, we can understand He is still moving forward in His unhurried but deliberate movement. Though this verse is in the context of the anticipated Day of the Lord (a whole other topic!), it reveals that our impatience doesn’t match His timing; it is from the wrong vantage point. With a shift in our understanding, we know we can rest in His right-time-movement.

This shift in vantage point brings me to a particular promise from the Lord. As I cast aside certain thoughts and emotions about these delays in my ideal timing, I choose to hold on to His promises. I can rest in God’s movement found in this verse:

And I am sure of this , that he who began a good work in you

will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

Philippians 1:6

I am somewhere between “began” and “completion.” All of me is found within the palm of His timing. Despite the long delay in writing and the finished product, I trust that this day of sharing with you isn’t a procrastination or simply a “slow to sort out” but, instead, His good work.

I invite you to join me in placing yourself in the palm of God’s timing and gaining confidence in His good work in you. Find comfort that He has our times in His hands. He is working good in each of our lives, even if time seems lost or wasted. Go to Him. Talk to Him about your time, your hours and days and weeks. Search out His promises in His word and rest.

Lord Jesus, It is good to know You are not slow, putting things off, as I might. My days need you. My sense of time needs your perspective. I rest in the promise that the work you have begun in me will be completed. You are not done with me and have plans and purposes for me that will work out by your grace. I trust You with my days. You are my beautiful God who holds me with love and patience. Bless You, my Father!

Further Study

  1. Yet. In the Strong’s Concordance, this word, od, means a going around, continuance, still, yet, again, beside. It can be an adverb expressing continuance, or persistence, usually of the past or present.
    • Explore Genesis 18:29 and Jeremiah 33:1, which both use the word still or again (yet). What is happening in each account of God and the listener to demonstrate that “yet” or persistence?
    • What “yet” from the Lord might be happening in your life? Are you an Abraham or a Jeremiah right now? What is the Lord speaking to you?
  2. Read Isaiah 40:8. Reflect on each word and how the first half relates to the second half of the verse. How can this verse strengthen your faith in our Father’s timing? Is there worship that can flow from this knowledge?
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