How often we cry to God for our needs. How frustrated we feel when in place of a voice of thunder booming in rapid response to our plight, silence answers us, year after year, till we begin to wonder in what way we might have offended God, as we see Him swiftly lend His attentive ear to the pleas of others while a deaf ear stares us in the face.
How often we have said in our hearts, “To what use is the answer to this request to me in five years’ time, when I need the response now?“.
We have assumed God’s delayed intervention would feel like a late delivery of a pizza we ordered three months ago, coming to our doorsteps when the appetite would have waned beyond repair, the joy with which we placed the order burnt while we fumed about the abnormal delay.
But God overlooks our childishness, our ignorance and foolish analysis, and He says, “Come along my child. Let’s take a walk, you and I.”
For God sees the destinations we desire, He knows what demands they will place on us, He knows us better than we know ourselves. And He knows, it’s not yet time, despite our intensified prayers, and belief that if only our ways are aligned with God’s, surely there will be a breakthrough.
The teacher is in a better position to tell which of his students is well prepared for an approaching exam. The teacher set the questions, propably tested his class with a mock-exam, and knows based on the feedback which ones will make it, and which ones will struggle.
And so, God takes us for a long walk, through water, fire, deserts, lonely tracks and trails, and at a point we wonder if God knows what He is doing, for what He is doing doesn’t correspond with our definitions of “going for a walk”.
But by the time we make a complete revolution like planets, returning to where we began, at a point it appears we know not where to go again, know not what to do. It appears we are back to square one, wasted time going round in circles, trusted a God who only succeeded in getting us to go in circles, a God who prefers the long routes whereas there were plenty of shortcuts.
But God knows we are worth much more than the sand we requested to play in, the wood we longed for whereas gold was within our reach. He knows what some of the things we ask for, and the destinations He has for us will cost, and that was what the long walk was all about -buying time to prepare us, to shape us, to grow us, to mature us, to build in us all it takes to contain the greatness He believes we are worth.
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