It is hard to believe we have closed 2015 and ushered in the New Year.  The passage of time seems to go faster as one gets older.

Speaking of time, I think one of the greatest time saving inventions of the modern age has to be the microwave oven.  The fact that within minutes, or even seconds, we can have foods warmed or cooked, liquids boiling, and popcorn popping is amazing to me.  How many of us remember back to our childhoods a time when leftovers had to be warmed in a traditional oven or on the stove top.  Eating leftovers that would get drier and browner with each subsequent warming if one was not a master of mixing just the right amount of heat and a bit of water as the food was reheated.

If you ever want to challenge a family’s routine, simply remove the microwave oven from the kitchen.  There is a sudden feeling of helplessness as a line forms waiting to use the toaster oven or your stomach growls while waiting for an entire pan of roasted whatever and mashed mush to be reheated on the stove.  Our family experienced this just before Thanksgiving when our microwave of 22 years decided to stop working.  Within a day of its demise, I realized that peace in the kitchen would not exist until I visited the local Best Box store and picked up a new microwave.  Waiting more than 5 minutes for food to warm up was a form of torture that no family member should endure- including me!  The breaking of the microwave oven was culinary equivalent of being taken out of a speeding jet airplane and placed into a covered wagon drawn by plodding oxen.

It reminded me of how much we have become spoiled by the concept of what I’m going to term “waitlessness”.  We no longer have to wait for much these days.  We have microwaves, drive-thrus, streaming songs, downloadable movies, instant these, and quicker those.  Even the spiritual season of Advent, a time of waiting for our Savior’s arrival, is lost on most of society.  It seems that Advent has been run over by a reindeer.

We often let our secular ‘waitlessness’ creep into our spiritual lives.  We want God to answer our prayers immediately, if not sooner.  We expect that we should be able to send a prayer request off to God, hit the Amen ‘start button’, and *BING*, have the instant results we have requested from Him.  But God does not operate on our time schedule, nor is He required to do so.  He does this for our own good, because He knows what is best for us.

If you look through Scripture, you will see our desire for “waitlessness” was going on long before microwaves graced our kitchens.  God had to repeatedly remind His people that His timing was not theirs.  The Old Testament prophet Habakkuk was frustrated with waiting for God to answer his prayer (Habakkuk 1:2) and God reminded him later that even if God delays in His answer, His answer is never late (Habakkuk 2:3) and that rashness is not a good thing (Habakkuk 2:4).  In Isaiah 49:8 God says “In a time of favor I answer you” showing that He knows not only what is best for us, but also when it is best for us.  In the New Testament, Jesus’s relatives attempt to get Him to go to Judea before He was ready to do so (John 7:1-6), and He tells them “My time is not here…”.  Even after Jesus is crucified and resurrected, the Apostles are waiting impatiently for God to answer their prayers for the restoration of Israel, as evident when they ask Jesus when He’s going to do this.  Jesus gently rebukes them by saying “It is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has established by his own authority” (Acts 1:7).  Finally, we all need to remember what Peter mentions in his second letter.  “But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day.” (2 Peter 3:8).  Jesus assures us that God will answer our prayers (Matthew 7:7-11), but it is important to note that He makes no mention of wait times.

So a very Happy New Year to all of you!  May 2016 bring all of us the gift of patience, peace in our spiritual waiting, and of course a working microwave.