Delayed Response

When my reading through the Bible last year took me through the book of Job again, I remembered how early in our health trials, my uncle gave us a volume with short reflections and applications from this ancient book. 

The Gospel According to Job

By Mike Mason

It has been several years since I read from that book, so I am inclined to pick it up again. But more recent reading brought me to another excerpt from Waiting for a Miracle by Jan Markell that fit perfectly.

"God reminds all who suffer that we have limited understanding. He also instructs us through the Book of Job to take heart in the orderliness of nature when we begin to doubt God. If there is obvious order in the universe, we can conclude there is even more order and purpose in what we would call the chaos of our lives. 

"Perhaps the ultimate lesson in the Book of Job is that God's silence does not equate his absence. If we could only get into the mind-set that we can trust God when there seems a delayed response from him. Bigger plans are on the way, as with Job! Delay is just one of God's "filter systems" and his silence is a portion of his strategy.

"God hears. He hears our groaning, our petitions, our prayers, our praise, our weeping. But to God, what happens to us is important and will determine what happens through us. Affliction truly reveals what we are made of, and affliction can become the laboratory for sincere spiritual discovery and growth."

God is our refuge and strength, an ever present help in trouble.

- Psalm 46:1

Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

- Philippians 1:6