I’m Not Good at Waiting
I confess it, I’m not good at waiting. Long lines in a checkout center annoy me. If I am stuck in one, my eyelids will twitch and my nostrils will flare in an accelerating rhythm. I will have to fight the desire to put down my merchandise and flee. Put me in a long line of traffic and I will curse the invention of the automobile itself. If I have placed an Amazon or eBay order, I will check the shipping updates almost hourly.
I’m not even good at waiting for holidays and birthdays. When I have a perfect present for a loved one, the days before giving the gift pass more slowly than turtles moving through a field of molasses, more slowly than a 200-car funeral procession, more slowly than a road crew on a summer Friday, more slowly than Randy Travis singing the Star-Spangled Banner.
Waiting on God
Although waiting for the opportunity to give a gift and waiting in a checkout line is hard for most of us, it is much more difficult to wait for God. Waiting on God is especially hard when we are worried. It is even more difficult to wait when we feel endangered or we believe others are attacking our reputation. Being time-bound persons, we want God to help us immediately. God, however, is not bound by our timetables.
We should never, in fact, mistake God’s seeming inactivity with God’s actual inactivity. From our limited perception, we simply cannot see even a small bit of what God is doing.
God’s Perspective and Our Perspective
Have you ever been to the beach and walked on a pier while on vacation? From a pier, you can get a great view of the majesty of the ocean, and it is magnificent to behold. The view from the pier, however, cannot give you any sense of the size of the ocean lying beyond your sunglasses. The Atlantic Ocean, the second largest ocean on earth, covers 41,105,000 square miles.[1] It is massive. There is no way to observe the whole it of while standing on a pier in your flip-flops and Bermuda shorts, obviously.
For a moment, though, imagine what kind of perspective would it require to know what was happening on every square inch of the ocean’s surface. What kind of superhuman capacity would be required to catalog every iceberg carried away in a current, every ship delivering goods, every dolphin gleefully leaping out of the ocean in a playful jaunt? What kind of perspective would allow you to see the tail of every great white pointed toward the heavens while stalking its prey?
Is there a view that would enable you to note every swimmer on every beach and see the bait on every hook as it is cast toward the water? What perspective would allow you to gauge every raindrop as it punctures the surface tension of the ocean while simultaneously measuring every tropical depression pushing down on the ocean’s surface? What perspective can you think of that would allow you to see the white top of every wave breaking on the surface of the Atlantic’s 41,105,000 miles? There is not one. It is impossible.
Even if a perspective of that magnitude were possible to us, knowing the Atlantic in its fullness would still be well beyond us because we have only talked about its surface. Oceans are three-dimensional. What kind of perspective would it take to know the location of every penguin flapping its wings through the icy water, or the direction of every school of fish, the size of every sea turtle, the temperature shifts of every current, or the voice of every whale? None in existence. Staggering in size, the ocean defies our ability to know all of its contents and actions.
When we look at the 41,105,000 square miles of ocean surface in the Atlantic, the vision boggles our mind, and rightly so. More mind-boggling than the Atlantic, however, is the person of God. One often neglected attribute of God is God’s infinite nature. Unlike the ocean, God is beyond measurement. Infinity cannot be measured. God’s infinity dwarfs the size of the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, all the oceans on Earth combined, and all the oceans on every planet in the universe combined. Because God is infinite, every planet, every star, and every galaxy pale in comparison to His greatness. His infinity is even beyond our concepts of infinity.
The Infinity of God
Since we readily concede we cannot fathom what is happening in the entirety of one of the earth’s oceans because of our limits, would it not also be wise to concede we cannot fathom what the infinite God is doing at a given place or time for the same reason? If we cannot fathom something finite, how could we possibly fathom Someone infinite?
We do not have the vantage to know what God is doing. Worse, we do not have the wisdom to understand what God is doing even if by a series of miracles we gained the vantage. Unable to observe all of what is doing or understand all of what God is doing, it would be best for us to leave aside notions of God’s passivity. Even if we can observe no movement from God, even if we can feel no action on our behalf, we should not let our limited experience convince us God is doing nothing any more than we would allow ourselves to believe there are no sharks in the ocean because we cannot see any from the pier. When it comes to the ocean, we simply know there is more going on than we can observe at any given moment. It is the same with God.
God Is At work
I believe one of the joys of the Gospel comes in knowing the infinite, omnipotent, eternal, omnipresent God is at work in ways beyond my perception. Even if I cannot perceive God’s work right now, I can rest comfortably knowing God is at work. It is human nature to want God to move more quickly, and we may have good reason to want God’s help speedily. It is fitting and right to pray for God’s resolution to our trials to come quickly. We do so, however, knowing of God’s infinite power and grace. We do so knowing God is at work. God’s help is coming.
[1] National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration US Department of Commerce, “How Big Is the Atlantic Ocean?” accessed April 26, 2022, https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/atlantic.html.
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