The Instant Life

Since time began, humans have been obsessed with figuring it out.  Setting out weeks, months, and years.  At the beginning, the amount of time in the day was dictated by the sun.  The sun went down, humans went to sleep, the sun woke up and so did the people.  But then came the oil lamp.  Then the gas lamp.  Then the electric lamp.  And now, we can have light for as long as we need it, even carrying flashlights smaller than a finger that are bright enough to illuminate an entire room.  And this has changed the way we live.

Our culture is one that is based around the idea that everything should take the least amount of time that it can possibly take.  Microwave ovens were designed so that food could be prepared in a matter of minutes rather than hours.  The same for washing machines and dryers for our clothes.  The industrial revolution meant that machines could make goods at rates faster than a human could ever dream.  The internet allowed for the international market to keep moving, each country in time with one another, even though one is at two in the afternoon and one is at two in the morning.  And it didn't stop there.

A couple of weeks ago, I bought a video game on the PlayStation4 (yes, I play video games.  and yes, I am very happy with my purchase).  Once I'd clicked all the right buttons and gotten a confirmation, I selected the "download now" button.  But alas, to my dismay, the "now" on that button was a misnomer.  The bar on the downloads screen clearly read "Estimated time: 1 hour".

An hour??  How was I expected to wait that long??

There are many things in our lives nowadays that are marketed as "instant".  Instant potatoes, instant soup, instant service.  It's so much so that you could almost say that all of us are living an instant life.

Everything is about immediate gratification.  Veruca Salt's philosophy has become ours.



We want our packages to arrive the moment we click "Buy".  We want to be able to eat as soon as we walk into the kitchen.  And we want God's answer to our prayers right now.

It's easy to fall into this trap.  Society has so ingrained this idea of the "instant" into our minds that often, it's easier to forget about the intricacies of God and just go with the world's fast-paced flow.

But God doesn't operate within time.

This is one of the hardest things for us humans to grasp.  I still don't fully understand it, and I'm pretty sure that I won't until I see Heaven.  Peter summed it up as best he could:

But do not forget this one thing, friends:

With the Lord a day is like a thousand years,

and a thousand years are like a day.

{2 Peter 3:8}

God answers prayer, alright, but it may be in thirty years, our time.  Or it may be in thirty minutes.  He doesn't have the same constraints that we do.  We only get 24 hours a day, and a good portion of that is or should be spent sleeping.  We only have so much time!  We need answers!  We want them now!

One of my Sunday School teachers a few years back said this: "There are three answers that God will give to your prayer - yes, no, and wait."

Wait for the Lord;

be strong and take heart

and wait for the Lord.

{Psalm 27:14}

Let me tell y'all, it's really hard to wait for God.  Waiting for an answer to a question can feel like it's taking an eternity when talking to a fellow human but it may quite literally be an eternity when God's the one you're waiting for.  One example of waiting on God, the first that always pops into my head, is the story of the last good man in the world and how God wiped everything else away.  Noah probably spent years (every one of them rain-less, mind you) building the ark.  Then it took seven days to get the animals loaded.  Then came the forty days and forty nights of torrential downpour while the entire earth got reshaped and wiped out, and then it was another hundred and fifty days of just water.  And then it was another two and a half months before they could just see the tops of the highest mountains.  Then two weeks waiting for the dove to find land.  Guys, it was ten and a half months from the beginning of the flood to the day they stepped off the ark.  Ten and a half months in a boat with only your family and a whole bunch of animals.  I mean, my family can barely stand each other for five hours in the car, can you imagine ten months?  And think of the pressure!  Knowing that your family and your family alone will repopulate the entire world.  Knowing that you'll have to split up and probably won't see each other again.  (Of course, they didn't part ways like they were supposed to... but that's a different story.)

Waiting on God was something that Noah did daily.  And he wasn't the only one.  The Bible is full to the brim with people who waited on the Lord. 

And I don't deny that they had their own struggles with waiting.  Any time they jumped the gun, so to speak, and went before God said to go, they suffered the consequences.  But we can take a lot from their example on how to exhibit the spirit fruit called Patience.

Abraham and Sarah waited for God's promise to come true, for their son to be born, and for a nation to come through him.  Joseph spent two years in a dungeon, waiting for someone to remember he was there.  Moses waited forty years in the desert before God said that the people could enter the Promised Land, and even then, he didn't make it.  Hannah waited for a child.  Gideon, for a command to go.  Naomi waited for God to send her Kinsman Redeemer, and David waited for his anointing as a child to come to fruition.  And Mary, sweet Mary, had to wait for God to tell her what she was supposed to do now - now that she was carrying His own son.  And the list doesn't stop there.

Be still in the presence of the Lord,
And wait patiently for Him to act.
{Psalm 37:7}

In a world that's constantly moving, finding a moment to be still is difficult.  I've always been good at sitting still when told to (being a pastor's kid, it was kind of drilled into me as a child), but it's easier to calm your body when your eyes have something to watch.  It's really hard to wait for something you can't see, especially when you don't know what it is you're waiting for.

But waiting for God to show you something tends to have really cool results.  Starting to read your Bible, with no expectation of what you will find, turns up nuggets of wisdom that you've never heard or that you haven't thought about enough.  Going into it with the prayer, "Tell me something", ends up showing you more than you could possibly imagine.  (and if you need help with that prayer, just pray the words of this song)

I waited patiently for the Lord to help me,

and He turned to me and heard my cry.

{Psalm 40:1}

God's never far from His children.  How neat is it that we get a Father who is both instant and infinite?  Have you ever thought about that before?  God is in this moment, and He will be here forever and forever. 

Take a moment (or, take a lifetime) to think about your Instant Life during this coming week.  And thank God that He has us in the instant, and in the infinite.

His blessings on you and yours,
~ Abby