Waiting for the day

Recently, a friend so mine went quite a few days "overdue" with her baby (since we know due dates are inaccurate at best). She was so patient, waiting for the perfect time for God to bring her baby into the world. And when her time came, she had a quick labor and birthed a ten and half pound baby boy with no problems.

She is much more patient than I am. I get to about 32 weeks and start feeling like a stuffed turkey. I moan and whine and wish for time to speed up until my baby comes. (Philip always tells me to enjoy it, because someday soon I will be wishing I were pregnant again. I roll my eyes like a petulant child and tell him that I won't. Of course, now I'm all twitchy for a new babe and totally wish I were pregnant again - but that's another subject). God, in His mercy, ignores my cries for deliverance and gives me strength to forbear until the proper time. And, when the time is perfect, the baby is born. And somehow, within a few days, I no longer remember the pains and travails of pregnancy. It seems like a very distant memory.

The Bible says that all creation groans for deliverance from sin (Rom 8:22). We too, long for the day of Christ's coming, when wrongs are made right and we are made into His likeness. Some days it just seems cruel that the earth continues to spin unaltered. So much sin, so much pain, so much evil exists. Like a heavily pregnant woman, we long for it to finally be the time of deliverance. Yet the Bible also tells us in II Peter 3 that it is the kindness of the Lord that causes Him to wait. He wishes that none would perish and so He lets creation groan in labor, knowing that every day more lost souls are found in Him.

But the day will come when His patience ends. Just as a woman cannot be pregnant forever (even though it feels like it), so creation will not groan in labor in vain. Someday, we will rise and find it is indeed that day, the day of deliverance we have longed for. And when it happens, we will count these days of trouble as a distant memory.