How Long Must We Wait?

This Sunday my Nana broke her wrist.

Yeah, not fun. Especially considering it was Superbowl Sunday. She was walking on a not-so-great road, tripped, tried to break her fall, and…

As a result, she and my Papa drove into town to wait at the Emergency Room (ER). Now if you live in America, you probably don’t share the pain of dreadfully long wait times, but…

Nana waited 23 hours.

No joke. Now I don’t want to blast the doctors – they did a great job. The problem was the lack of doctors on that specific day coupled with the sheer number of people in need.

While Nana was in the hospital, she needed physical care (for her wrist). Thankfully, the pain wasn’t all that excruciating. Nonetheless, she had to wait. And wait. And wait.

In many ways, what Nana experienced was similar to how we sometimes have to wait for God, with one major difference.

God is always listening.

Prayer, in some ways, is like an Emergency Room. When we’re hurting, we go to it and talk to God. Except that with God, there is no waiting.

Unlike what my Nana experienced, God will listen to you and help you right away. However, He doesn’t always heal you right away. That would be like asking the doctor to magically “insta-heal” Nana’s broken wrist. Not gonna happen. God isn’t Gilderoy Lockhart (you Harry Potter fans will know what I’m getting at).

The Lord is with you.

As Psalm 18:6 (NIV) says, “In my distress I called to the Lord; I cried to my God for help. From his temple he heard my voice; my cry came before him, into his ears.“

Like last week, when I talked about how God’s faithful love endures forever, I want to reiterate the point that His love has no bounds. Space and time cannot withhold God’s love from you.

In times of hardship it’s easy to forget about God and instead turn to social media, food, or other things to distract us. What we forget is that God is sitting right beside us. He’s like your own personal doctor – except He heals your soul instead of just your body.

While Nana will heal from a broken wrist, only God can save her soul – which He has.

God has no wait time.

You’d think you’d have to wait a lot longer than 23 hours to talk to the God of the Universe because He’d be so busy. But unlike mortal doctors, He is omnipresent, meaning He can be everywhere at once. Pretty cool, right?

So next time things get hard, I hope you remember that God is there for you. ALWAYS. He’s sitting beside you even now, wherever you are. He’s there, waiting for you to come to Him in your time of need.

You don’t have to wait for God – you just have to ask. Will you?