Have you ever tried to describe to someone what it was like before time began? “There was a time,” you might say, “before time began, when … “ And that just doesn’t sound right. We are stuck here in Time, because we were created and dropped in a timeline, and it won’t go away. It’s different out in space, where an astronaut can travel many times around the Earth and see four or five days and nights within just a few hours (as calculated by the digital clocks and watches on board the spaceship). So days (the evening and the morning were the first of them) don’t mean the same thing “up there.”
Likewise, God, the Creator of the Heavens and Earth, is not restricted like we are, to a life in Time. He stands outside of it and truly, a day is as a thousand years, and vice versa.
But, for those of us ”under the sun,” as the Preacher of Ecclesiastes says, we have a limited number of years, which translate into a certain amount of months, weeks, and days. Every heartbeat takes us closer to the end of them. We need to use our allotted time wisely.
Last week, I posted this picture on Facebook, which was, of course, facetious. It is a picture of “The Watched Pot That Never Boils.”
While it’s true that some water would help, and turning on the burner would also aid the pot in boiling, the point is that it takes time, and we by nature are impatient.
And it is precisely because of our impatience that so many new timesaving inventions have come into being, such as The InstaPot. While I’ve never tried one, I’ve heard tell that you can put a piece of frozen meat into the pot and have it done and tender within an hour. That is truly amazing! And it puts my pressure cooker to shame. Yes, even more so because all my kids were afraid of the pressure cooker anyway, regardless of whether it could quickly cook a tender roast. I’m afraid some of them have PTSD from hearing the whistling and whooshing of the steam, when cooling the cooker under the bathtub faucet.
Healing takes time. God has given us an immune system that many times can handle what is thrown at us, but it may require days or even weeks of taking it easy. The scab really should stay there until it falls off. The sprained ankle may be tender for months. The cough may continue to bug you after the cold, even for several weeks. But there is a raging war going on in our body when we are sick or injured, and we must do all we can to help the war effort. You know the drill: plenty of fluids, rest, and healthy foods top the list -- and sometimes, an antibiotic, too.
Healing a damaged relationship also takes time. There are still some of those in my life that seem to never heal but only to fester. I want that to be over and done and I am impatient. My life on earth is brief. How long can we have a sour relationship? Can we just get over it?
But I need to spend more time in prayer, and try by increments to work towards real and lasting healing, and not assume that band-aids heal all wounds.
Losing weight takes time. I have had to remind myself of that over and over again. If I lose a half pound today, it might come back tomorrow, and then I might despair that anything will work – ever. But it has taken eight or nine months every time I have lost 30 or 40 lbs., and I must keep at it and not be disturbed by the daily fluctuations. When my weight goes back up, it might just be that carry-in or that holiday, but if it’s not ridiculous, it usually will come off in a couple more days. It could also be just that I didn’t drink eight cups of water that day, and elimination is stalled.
I did have a sinus infection this week, but the good thing about being sick is that you do a lot of sleeping, miss some meals because you’re not hungry, eat less, and LOSE WEIGHT! Unfortunately, that’s usually a temporary situation. Now I have an antibiotic, so by the third day, I should feel better. Even with the doctor appointment and prescription, I still have to wait.
Whatever the case, my weight loss depends upon my perseverance, and that means, even if I mess up my diet, I have to get back up on the horse, so to speak, and keep trying. Right now, I’m using Nutrisystem, and they know how easy it is to get off-track if something uncomfortable happens in your life. People tend to go for so-called “comfort food,” that is, something you used to eat as a kid, or that just tastes good and reminds you of good times. So the diet includes healthy mac & cheese, pizza, and plenty of chocolate.
If I give up, though, and my weight rises, I’ll have to lose those pounds all over again, and that will take even more time than I thought.
Strawberries take time. We know this from the 4-H Strawberries project. The first year after you’ve planted your strawberry patch, you must let it grow and not waste the young plants’ energy on producing fruit. So you literally have to “nip them in the bud” – pinch off the young flowers before they turn into strawberries. Then you still have to do the normal weeding all summer without any fruit to show for it, and also train the plants to stay in rows, or you will wind up with an unruly patch that affords you no place to step. The second year, you will have bigger, better, and more plentiful strawberries.
But all farmers are aware of the amount of patience it takes to grow any crop. Sometimes the weather in January is tantalizingly warm and the urge to till the soil and plant is there, beckoning. Sometime in April, it just seems right that if you plant now, the crop will come in early. But you are wise if you read the seed packet and … wait, until all danger of frost in your region has passed.
Housebreaking a dog takes time. We complained about this issue with our dog to the 4-H Dog Obedience leader, and she told us how it’s done, so we resolved to try it. The disappointment came when we asked how long this process generally takes, and the answer was in years, not days. We wanted it to be days!! And it takes going out with the dog on the leash several times a day, whether the weather be good, or whether the weather be not. Maybe our mistake was being dog owners in the first place.
But Eric has been very good lately, to take Precious out, since we have no kids left to do that job. He has far more patience with a dog than I do!
Counted cross-stitching takes time. This was another 4-H project, and for a while, I really got into this project myself. It was a natural for me, being so near-sighted. When our kids were young, I made “special blankets” for all the new babies at church. Many of our kids and other members of the church also participated, making small quilt blocks for me to piece, back, and quilt. And the best ones had cross-stitched words and pictures.
With cross-stitching, if you wanted to make a larger picture, you could sit for hours working on one color, say the dark brown in the hair of a little boy in a Precious Moments pattern, and in the end, with a stretch and a yawn, you might say, “Wow! I’ve gotten almost half of the dark brown done!” Then, you could look back at what you’d done and notice you had an X crossed the wrong way a couple of rows up, and with chagrin in your countenance, you would go to bed (because it was bedtime), thinking, “This project is going to take YEARS!”
But, precisely because it did take so long, one of our young students was given the task of cross-stitching “Haste Makes Waste” in the largest, fanciest letters we had patterns for. This was to slow her down and make sure she was more careful with her work.
Here’s a piece I designed and still keep on my office wall. It doesn’t look like that much work, until you actually draw a flower and figure out how you’re going to make it look real using only X’s and outlines.
Getting an education takes time. It especially takes time nowadays if you have to cope with leftist ideology on your campus while trying to learn how to do a job. So I, along with Valerie, are, as she put it, “college dropouts,” because both of us quit after two years. And eventually, credits towards a degree expire, but not the college debt.
Eric looked up the requirements to be an archeologist when he was in high school, thinking he might like to do that. But when he found out it would take at least twelve years, he wasn’t as fascinated with the prospect as he had been.
I should say, Lisa does have the record for having completed the most years of college among our immediate family, having a bachelor’s in communication from IU. So far, she’s beaten all of us, but David is working towards a degree in architecture now, which isn’t so easy, either.
Raising a family takes time. I was going to say it takes awhile to have a baby – nine whole months! Here’s a picture of Vivian and Grandbaby #20, who is scheduled to make his or her debut next month! (Aren’t they beautiful?)
But the fact is, that is only the beginning. If you can deal with the time it takes for a baby to grow and develop without getting antsy towards the end (impossible!), you are well on your way to accepting the responsibility for that young life throughout his or her childhood and teen years (a couple of decades). And then after that comes the joy of still being available as a counselor and friend for the adult child for the rest of your life.
Conquering the world takes time. Here’s where it gets scary. I read recently that China has a 100-year plan to conquer the whole world. How many Chinese communists who were in on the writing of that plan will still be alive after 100 years? But we are coming towards the end of that plan, which should be around 2040. Will they succeed? Will their successors succeed? We don’t know yet, but it’s obvious they have not given up. What was mentioned in the article was that the Communists know conquering the world takes time.
And they know that we Americans have a soft underbelly – our money. And they are content to give us plenty of that, for a while. Money, as a god, would make us fat, dumb, and happy, and unprepared for a final fight.
“The idols of the nations are silver and gold, The work of men's hands.
They have mouths, but they do not speak; Eyes they have, but they do not see;
They have ears, but they do not hear; Nor is there any breath in their mouths.
Those who make them are like them; So is everyone who trusts in them.”
~Ps. 135:15-18
Trusting in the god of money makes us … well, dead – no breath.
I wrote a couple of weeks ago that we can’t even see ahead ten years to be able to plan our lives, and that we often are only living for right now, or maybe for the coming weekend. While Westerners believe a war should be over in a few years tops, it is a formidable enemy who has our destruction in mind, and who is content to wait a hundred years to finish us off.
Evangelizing the world also takes time. Here's where it gets good. Jesus said, just before He was crucified, that He had to go away. Why? Because He wanted to send the Comforter, who would be available to all of us because He was omnipresent. That was much the better plan.
But Jesus also knew it would take plenty of time to spread the message of salvation to all the world. If his disciples were to fulfill the Great Commission, going into all the world to preach the Gospel of Salvation, they had to start in Judea, expand their reach to Samaria, and then take the Good News everywhere. It took awhile to invent a printing press, learn so many languages, and translate the Bible into them, all the while surviving centuries of intense persecution by the enemy of Mankind.
In this, the Day of the World Wide Web, it is still remarkably difficult to get the message to some of the unreached or under-reached people groups, and is only accomplished by smuggling small portions of Scripture into a country and distributing them under cover of night.
But also, Jesus said that while He was gone, He would be preparing us a place.
“In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
“And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.”
~John 14:2-3
Preparing our place in Heaven has taken time. But when it is all finished, He will come and get us, and we can move in. Can you imagine how good this place must be, if it has taken Jesus 2,000 years to get that job done? Remember, this is the same Jesus who spoke the entire universe into existence in seven days! And as true as it is, that a thousand years are like a day to Him, to us earthlings, it has seemed like a very long wait.
Here are the words we all need to remember, concerning the wait:
“Beloved, I now write to you this second epistle (in both of which I stir up your pure minds by way of reminder), that you may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior, knowing this first: that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts, and saying, ‘Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.’
“For this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water.
“But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
“The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.”
~2 Peter 3:1-9
Jesus is not late -- He’s patient. The longer He waits, the longer we have to fulfill the Great Commission. Don’t be one of the scoffers. Keep doing the work of the ministry! He is indeed coming!
Here’s what we have to do, from an old song by Andrae Crouch, “It Won’t Be Long”:
It won't be long, till we'll be leavin' here.
It won't be long. We'll be goin' home.
Count the years as months, count the months as weeks,
Count the weeks as days. Any day now, we'll be goin' home.
(Source: https://sweetslyrics.com/andrae-crouch/it-wont-be-long-lyrics)
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