I’ve been thinking about the story of Joseph lately, how God let Joseph suffer through 13 years of slavery and prison before raising him up to Egyptian royalty. It seems that God is in no hurry to develop character, (as my daily Bible pointed out).
I was talking to a friend about this very thing today when I made the following observation: that’s the thing about God that sucks. He’s not in any kind of hurry with us. He’s more into to tinkering, waiting, seeing what works and what doesn’t and then tinkering some more. He’s into relationship and, because they’re kind of a package deal, work. He’s willing to suffer through our pain and our discomforts with us, even to put up with our whining and our relentless questions: “Are we there yet? Are we there yet now?”
He’s such a good dad in that way. And yet, that’s the very thing about him that can make you want to scream.
Sometimes I want him to feel my sense of urgency, to understand why it is so very important to me that he act now or that he fix this right now, but he’s not into urgency. God would not make a good paramedic.
Instead, he holds my hand while I wrestle him and he gently reminds me that my “suffering” isn’t really all that bad and, like it or not, there are things I can learn from it. And even when my suffering is real, even when I’m treated poorly and evil men seem to flourish around me, even then, he is with me and there is a joy and a peace to be found in that.
I known these are scattered thoughts. I’m trying to understand them, myself, trying to understand what God is doing, or at least, to be okay with not understanding him. It’s hard. I think that’s what real faith is about—trusting when you don’t understand. So I’m trying to have faith, but that is hard, too.
I pray that God will help me. I am sure that he will.
