Today’s devotional: the long hard wait for Easter
We’re well into Lent, but Easter remains several weeks away. Does it ever feel like Easter approaches at a glacial pace?
At A Slice of Infinity, Margaret Manning observes that Easter certainly does “take its time” in arriving—and that God tends to unveil his plans and purposes at a measured pace very much at odds with that of our frantic, always-busy modern lives. She contrasts our frenzied schedules with the pace of God’s revelation in the Bible:
The lives depicted in the Bible couldn’t be more different from our hurried lives. More importantly, and perhaps to our great frustration, the God revealed in the biblical stories is rarely in a hurry. Abraham and Sarah, for example, received the promise of an heir twenty-five years before they actually laid eyes on Isaac. Joseph had a dream as a seventeen year old young man that his brothers would one day bow down to him. Yet it was countless years and many difficulties later that his brothers would come and kneel before him, asking for food. Moses was eighty years old—long past his prime of life—when God appeared to him in the burning bush and called him to deliver the children of Israel. David was anointed king by Samuel as a young boy tending his father’s flocks, long before he finally ascended to the throne. And Jesus spent thirty years in relative obscurity, not involved in public ministry, and only three years announcing the kingdom and God’s rule in his life and ministry.
From our perspective, it is difficult to understand why God wasn’t more in a hurry rushing to accomplish the plans and purposes, not only in these individuals’ lives, but also in the plan of redemption. The Messiah was prophesied hundreds of years before he actually arrived on the scene. We cannot help but ask why God seems to move so slowly?
Read the full devotional at A Slice of Infinity.
“Why does God move so slowly?” “How long, oh Lord?” They’re familiar cries, uttered by people waiting for an answer to a desperate prayer or wishing that God would resolve a problem sooner rather than later. But the Bible—and the long slow march to Easter—can help us to understand God’s deliberate timing, and the value of patience and contentment. The promise of Easter may be a long time coming—but it will arrive!
