Discipline, Disappointment And The Delays Of Love
Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days.
John 11:5-6
When news reached Jesus that his friend Lazarus was critically ill, everyone expected Jesus to rush to Lazarus’s side.
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Instead, Jesus waited—an act of love misunderstood by many of his disciples.
But the pain had a purpose: that God might be glorified through it all. Alexander Maclaren offers these comforting words concerning the love of Christ.
WALK WITH ALEXANDER MACLAREN
“Christ’s delays are the delays of love. If we could once get that conviction into our hearts, how quietly we should go about our work!
“What patience we would have if we recognized that the only reason which moves God in his choice of when to fulfill our desires and lift away burdens is our own good!
“Nothing but the purest, simplest love sways him in all that he does. “Why should it be difficult for us to believe this?
“If we were more akin to looking at life—with all its often unwelcome duty, and its arrows of pain and sorrow—as a discipline, and were to think less about the unpleasantness and more about the purpose of what befalls us, we should find far less difficulty in understanding that his delay is born of love, and is a token of his tender care.”
WALK CLOSER TO GOD
God loves his children too much to give them less than his best. His love is evident in different ways. He disciplines. He delays. He disappoints. Not to dishearten us, but to show us that even in the moments of waiting, he is at work.
Can we pierce through our own circumstances to see that truth? In a day when everything from Twitter to Google searches is instant, learning to wait on the Lord may prove to be a challenging assignment.
But then, isn’t it worth it all when you know that the best is yet to come?
