Patience

Nehemiah gets a lot of press for being a patient man. But when you think about the other stories of big projects in the Bible, Nehemiah's is one of the fastest moving. He just waits a few months for permission to go, and the wall is done in a mere 52 days.

In contrast, Noah was 500 when he is first mentioned. He is 600 when the earth floods. And between the rain and waiting for the flood waters to recede, he is on the ark for about 9 months. Abraham died hundreds of years before his descendants would truly conquer the promised land. Joseph was wrongly imprisoned for two years, and that was only a part of his path from slave to leader.

The Israelites cried out in captivity in Egypt for 400 years. They wandered in the desert for 40 years. David had to wait until after his death for his son to achieve his dream of building the temple. Paul waited and prayed but never did get rid of the thorn in his flesh.

And the Messiah? Thousands of years of waiting for him to show up. (And Simeon was sure waiting!)

In fact, the "faith hall of fame" in Hebrews 11 says this about many of those examples: "All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth." They knew that their patience would pay off in the form of answered promises, even if they never saw it happen in their lifetime. So they lived by faith.

Bottom line: Sometimes it takes a lot of waiting to see God's hand do mighty things. Nehemiah, one of the shortest "waiting" timespans, is the one we look at, probably because 4 months is all we can bear when we think about waiting for something. But the truth is, sometimes we don't even get to see what God does with our lives, because his story is bigger than you or me as individuals. God is doing good things, and the best things are worth waiting for.

I recently reflected on Psalm 103:5: "...[he] satisfies your desires with good things." As I reflected on it I thought about my tendency to manipulate situations I feel are taking too long. I realized that my impatience means I'm satisfying my own desires with lesser things. But if I wait on his timing, I'll find that he has good things in store for me.