Anthropomorphic Patience
Patience as we understand it is clearly different than patience as God knows it. This is, simply, because we are not God. But I am learning a cool new lesson about patience and what it means to wait. Does the following scenario sound familiar?
It seems to happen fairly frequently in this life: we are waiting for something to happen. Usually, it is largely out of our control. Maybe it is waiting to get pregnant, or waiting for a house to sell, or waiting for a promotion to come along. And so we pray to God about it, since nothing is out of His control. And after a spell of waiting for change, we realize that maybe the reason we are still waiting is so we can learn a lesson. And so we pray some more and wait some more and seek out what it could be that He wants us to learn. And then, huzzah! The lesson becomes apparent; we feel a certain peace in knowing what the lesson was and why now is the right time for everything to happen.
But here is the problem: what if we see the lesson, learn it, and still we wait? What if we feel we have conquered the situation yet nothing changes? I am learning two things in this. The first is that there may be more than one lesson that needs to be grasped. The second is that our time will never be God’s time.
I hope that I am not constricting God to only teach me things when I am avidly seeking something. I trust Him to teach me consistently. I also hope that I am not so confident to think that I know when I have learned enough to dictate when and where things happen. Let us remember that God is sovereign: our prayers may never be answered in the way we think they will be or should be. The key is our constant obedience to Him.
I am pretty sure we will never understand God’s timing completely. Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for three days (Jonah 1:17). Namaan washed seven times in the Jordan (2 Kings 5:14). The Hebrews were in the desert for forty years (Numbers 14:34). There is no debating that the numbers three, seven, and forty are common in the Bible. But it certainly seems that in all of those instances, a lesser time would have sufficed. At least it seems that way to us.
2 Peter 3:8 — But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is as one day.
May we not ascribe to God the “patience” we have. That is called anthropomorphizing patience to Him. In other words, God’s patience is godly, ours is not. And He is sovereignly in control over time.
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