We are impatient people. We are used to solving problems, not living with them. If we can’t solve the problem, we move on to something else. If we can’t “fix†the relationship, we move on to someone else.
But sometimes, things take time. Things like raising children, building character, growing faith, building trust. Sometimes, you have to wait to see how things turn out. Sometimes, in the long run, you see that all the pain and hard work and frustration and seeming failure were worth it after all.
And that’s just from our limited perspective! But what about God’s perspective? We fret about everything in our world that is not as it should be, and question God’s goodness in “allowing†such evil to persist. Is it possible that God is waiting … waiting for us to grow up, waiting for us to get it right, waiting for us to learn virtue and justice and love, instead of doing it for us? Is it possible that what we sometimes interpret as God’s indifference is really God’s patience?
That’s what faith is: taking the long view, seeing things from God’s perspective, putting trust — complete trust — in God’s wisdom and goodness, believing that the power that raised Jesus from death is indeed even now at work among us. We may not always see the results we want when we want them, but faith believes that God’s power is at work and will one day bring to us and to our world new life — a new life, a new existence, a new way of being, a new way of being with God — that will last forever! Now that’s something worth waiting for!