Posted by I am about as patient as a backwards bulldozer on a steep incline to a rushing river. I don’t want to wait. I want it now. Actually, yesterday would be better.
“All in good time”
“God only gives us what we can handle”
“God’s timing is always perfect”
Those aren’t my favorite slogans. They are annoying, not comforting to me on all but my best and most infrequent zen-Anne days. I am writing this blog in hopes of finding some patience and peace with divine timing by the time I reach the bottom of the page…
I come by this instinct honestly. My father is a retired surgeon. Thorughout his very successful professional life, he took the approach that if it needed fixing, you better go in, grab it, and sew it back up as fast as you can to minimize cancer spreading, further damage, and possibilities for collateral damage from internal bleeding. So I do the same thing when I see something that needs fixing. I don’t want to wait. I was not trained to wait.
But God’s timing is better than mine. If I could stop surgically altering my life with my tendency to make grand swoops of the scalpel on friendships, kids’ decisions to ignore my direction, budding relationships, and work issues, I might actually let go and let God work his miracles on them. Becasue when I think I am using a careful scalpel to fix things, it often turns out to be just a misplaced butter knife.
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I wrote the above paragraphs 2 weeks ago, in hopes of writing myself into a patient place with God’s timing by the time I got to the end of the blog entry. I know you are shocked; it didn’t happen. I instead stewed about what to write and how to find the answers that meant something important and could show you how patient we can all be with God’s timing. So today, on Good Friday eve, I have decided it might be interesting to be here with you, in my turmoil, to let God’s timing work on my blog entry as well.
On the eve of Jesus’ crucifixtion, his disciples were not happy with his predictions. They didn’t want to believe that he would be taken from them, that he would suffer, and they argued with Jesus about it. They wanted a different way out of God’s plan.
I argue with God quite a bit too, (over obviously much pettier issues) because I want it easier, I want the amazing blessings, and I want them NOW, not in God’s time on God’s plan. But it is God’s plan, after all. And his plan on the eve of Good Friday looked pretty sucky to the disciples. They were being told they would lose their dearest friend, teacher, comforter, savior. And not only would they lose him, but they would be part of the betrayal. That is certainly a sucky prospect to ponder. They had no idea God was sacrificing his son to save all of us. We had no idea the amazing blessing behind the pain and turmoil.
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