Perfect Patience Produces Positive Results

If there is one thing I am bad at - and by bad I mean terrible - it's patience. I'm like a poorly trained puppy when it comes to doing what I want when I want to do it. I blame that on a mostly independent lifestyle up until I got married. Moving to a new country, becoming part of a new family while learning and growing inside a new marriage will make you a very dependent person, pretty quickly.

But to be fair, patience was a struggle of mine as far back as I can remember. I just don't see the logic in waiting. If you see something that looks like it's going to be good and you can see no reason why you shouldn't do it, then what are you waiting for?! Carpe diem (seize the day)! But, what about what you can't see?

My father always says the most dangerous knowledge is what you don't know, you don't know. I'm sure he got that from somewhere but it has stuck with me. What don't I know? What don't I see? 

The truth is, there will always be gaps in our ability to see. We're human. Now, let me think, where have I heard that before? 

 Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.1 Corinthians 13:12 NLT

So, if you can't see all the pieces, how do you know if something is a good idea? The short answer is that you don't, but God does. Recently, I was preparing a children's church lesson on Noah. Now if you ever want to be humbled by what you don't know, go to children's church. I am amazed at what I learn as an adult, about stories I've known since I was in children's church. In the fact compilation stage of preparation, I reread the timeline of Noah and his ark and I found this scripture:

As kids, we learn the song that teaches us, 'it rained and poured for 40 long days-ies, days-ies' and then Noah sent out a dove and once the dove found dry land, boom, Noah and his family and all the animals were set free. Now I know I've read this scripture before and must have thought about this, but for some reason reading this now I was surprised.

Noah was now 601 years old. On the first day of the new year, ten and a half months after the flood began, the floodwaters had almost dried up from the earth. Noah lifted back the covering of the boat and saw that the surface of the ground was drying. Two more months went by, and at last the earth was dry! Genesis 8:13-14 NLT

If the ark had already landed on Mount Ararat and it was dry enough to open the door of the ark, why the heck didn't Noah get off that boat? Are you telling me that after 10 and a half months, you wouldn't be itching to exit that thing? Of course you would. In fact, I'd be crawling out of my skin just to get my feet on the ground and take a walk. But Noah didn't exit. In fact, he shut the door and stayed in the boat for another two months. 

I'll tell you why; Noah was waiting for a very important piece of this puzzle. 

Then God said to Noah, “Leave the boat, all of you—you and your wife, and your sons and their wives. Genesis 8:15-16 NLT

You see, he had never done any of this whole 'build an ark thing' by himself. He didn't envision the rain, he didn't conceive the plan, and he didn't even build the ark on his own. God did it all. So now, after all this time, I'm sure Noah wasn't about to leave without the go-ahead from God. 

Noah started his journey with what he didn't know, he didn't know. He trusted God with the plan. Now, I don't know the logistics of releasing all those animals out onto the soaked, muddy ground. Maybe there were still dangerous bodies of water that Noah couldn't see, or maybe the ground wasn't stable enough to support elephants and the like. I mean, the Bible does say that the water also erupted from the ground, so who knows what kind of terrain was out there. I'll tell you who knew: God. 

Noah had the patience to wait on God's timing, even when the path seemed clear, even when the thing he had been promised seemed to have arrived. Imagine what a miracle dry ground would have seemed like to that family! But, if they had moved on their own ability to see, the outcome of Noah's story could have been a lot different and it's a good thing he waited because all of humanity depended on it!

In constructing the lesson, I was also impressed by God's reaction to sin in this story. Because of the sin that covered the earth, God wiped out all human flesh in order to eradicate sin, but He knew this was only a temporary fix. In fact He says in Genesis 8:26, "I will never again curse the ground because of the human race, even though everything they think or imagine is bent toward evil from childhood." 

In contrast, when man had repopulated the earth and sin once more abounded, God took an entirely different approach, He sent His son, His flesh, to eradicate sin.  The first time, He cleaned up the mess with water, but the second time he washed away the problem altogether. I love that. Even His justice is poetic. 

I'll wrap this up by returning to the point of this blog: patience. I am reminded that even my waiting belongs to the Lord. His timing, as always, is perfect and even an incredible miracle can be wasted by jumping the gun. When I allow the Lord to work in me the patience that is required for whatever task or journey I face, the outcome will be unimaginable. Like a rainbow appearing after a rainstorm, the process will produce beautiful results.