Our culture is now. Immediate. Season-less. Rushed fast past any minutes, days, hours, weeks, or years that we perceive to be in our way. Point and click and enter your credit card number. It will arrive in two business days. Please give us your feedback. What can I do to get you into this car today?  With a polite, impersonal smile, waiting and anticipation have been quietly asked to leave our party.

But God loves waiting. Fulfilling last-minute promises to Sarah, stretching Gideon to his final men, wandering deserts for decades, circling cities for days before they fall, and giving His Son years before beginning a scandalous ministry of forgiveness and healing. A God of delayed gratification. How perfectly fitting.

For God is decades, autumns, generations, lifetimes, childhoods. He is contently patient in His perceptions and pleasantly disregards what we consider to be appropriate timing. His words stretch over years and lands. They are slow and persistent, growing deep and strong in the few human hearts prepared to receive His demanding and tender roots.

Wait, my friend. Wait, my child. Wait on Him who waited so long for you. Wait on Him who waits always for your return. Wait on Him who has marked and mapped your days with more precious detail than you will ever know. The world will spin and swirl without you just the same. It is no matter.

Wait on the everlasting Lord and receive the gift of His brilliant stillness.

The world calls us to wake up and get at it. Many in the church call us to wake up and get to making the world a better place. And there is, of course, a place and time for action. Yet the scandal of the Gospel calls us with a different voice. It is the voice of the Risen Lord who left a village filled with needy people to go and be alone with His Heavenly Father. It is the voice of the Risen Lord who was happy with the woman sitting at His feet over the woman doing what was culturally appropriate at the time in regard to hospitality.

When Jesus called the twelve to the mountain to be named disciples, he called them to be with Him. Above and beyond all things, practice being with Him. Learn not memorize scripture, learn not get through two chapters in the Bible, and learn not to attend Christian gatherings regularly. Learn how to be with Jesus. Nothing will shape your life more powerfully or perfectly.