Welcome to a new week of the STC Sheffield daily podcast. My name is Helen, and over the next 5 days I’ll be concluding our journey through the letter of 2 Peter and then moving on to the book of 1 John. I do hope you’ll be able to join us each day.
Our Bible passage for Monday is 2 Peter 3:1-9, and I’m going to focus on verses 8 and 9, which say:
“But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: with the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you.”
REFLECTION:
Before I worked at church, I was an Assistant Head at a secondary school in the city, and my subject was History. Every September, when the new Year 7s had just started with us, the first lesson of History that we did was always about chronology.
A child’s understanding of time is one of the last skills they develop, and it’s not unusual for an 11 year old to make several mistakes when drawing a timeline of their own lives…..let alone one of world history.
In many ways, this inability to grasp the concept of chronology and the passage of time is surprising, because as humans we are obsessed by time…
We talk about watching the clock, counting down the hours; we order something online and have come to expect next day delivery – instant gratification; supermarkets are open 24/7 and face creams tell us that they can turn back time and defy the ageing process.
In the current situation with Covid19, we’re constantly seeking answers to questions about timings, dates and deadlines. How long will I be on furlough? When can I go to the gym? What is university going to be like in the autumn? Will there be a vaccine this year? When can toddler groups start again? How long until we can sing in church?
With no answers to these questions we find ourselves becoming increasingly impatient, frustrated, fed up and angry.
We say to God, “Lord, answer my prayer for this to end – why haven’t you, why aren’t you? Why can’t you just make this all go away?”
But then the Word of God – in 2 Peter 3:8 – breaks in and cuts right through this:
“But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: with the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.”
These words are so simple, and yet there is so much we can learn from them.
Firstly, there is the reminder that God does not follow or fit our timescales or our chronology. God has his own time.
Human time is now, it is finite, it is based on lifetimes, and it can be measured; God’s time is something altogether different – it is immeasurable, it is future time, forever time; it is eternal.
We cannot confine or box God into our 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 12 months of the year, type of time.
As we begin to understand this, there comes a more profound reflection that we can learn from – if God does not operate within the confines or the boundaries of human time; then this means that he is never slow in doing something.
When we feel impatient or frustrated at God’s apparent inactivity or his sluggish response, we need to remember that he is, in fact, always working.
That’s why verse 9 says, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you.”
Making judgements about whether God has, or has not, been delayed in doing something, shows our lack of understanding about the nature of divine time and the character of God.
God is not sitting on a cloud in heaven getting distracted, twiddling his thumbs, or putting off making some decision or another.
God does not procrastinate, but God is patient.
God will do things in his own time.
And at the end of verse 9, we also learn that God’s timing and God’s patience has a purpose.
God is patient and slow to anger because he wants to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to repent.
Therefore, for God, there is no such thing as wasted time.
So what should our response be to these simple words and simple reflections, especially in times such as these?
If, according to our timescale or chronology, it seems like right now God is delaying things, being slow, or not answering our prayer, do we just sit around, whiling away the hours and counting down the days?
Do we start to think that 2020 has just been a waste of a year, a write off? Do we feel that there is no point in really doing anything, until things go back to normal and we can do them ‘properly.’
Because that is definitely not what God is thinking or doing.
Instead, are we asking God what he wants us to do with this year? However strange or unprecedented, are we using this time that God has given us purposefully?
In the face of Covid19 – while we wait for lockdown to be over, when there are no quick answers to our time focused questions, in this most challenging of times – are we displaying patience and a slowness to anger that are the hallmarks of our Heavenly Father? Or is our attitude characterised more by frustration and a fraying temper?
In the timeline of our lives, 2020 will become just a line on a page – but let’s not make it a year that is described as a waste, or we come to recall as a time when God was slow in answering prayers and returning things to normal.
“But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: with the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.”
Let us use this year to ask God what his purpose is for us in this time, let us remember it as the time when God taught us patience, when he showed us how to be slow to anger, and let it be a period in our life when we really started to learn what it meant to trust in God’s perfect timing. And let’s start that today.
PRAYER:
Heavenly Father, thank you that you are never slow to keep your promises to us. Help us to give this year back to you, and show us how you want us to use this time for your purposes. Amen.
BIBLE READING: 2 Peter 3:1-9 (NIV)
Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I have written both of them as reminders to stimulate you to wholesome thinking. I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles.
Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.
But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.