Lord, Help Me to Trust Your Timing.

"One more minute."

That is Jesse's answer to almost everything at the moment. Dinner is ready, the TV needs to go off, and before I have finished the sentence, he is already negotiating. One more minute!

Theo goes a different way. He looks up at me and says, "I don't like what you're saying." Time to get your shoes on. I don't like what you're saying. Time to brush your teeth. I don't like what you're saying.

I laugh about it. But then I catch myself praying and realize I am doing exactly the same thing with God.

I pray for the door to open, the phone to ring, the season to change, a breakthrough.

And what comes back is: wait...

I've often found myself thinking, "Lord, I don't like what You're saying."

Because it is not a no, which at least lets you grieve it and move on. It is not the yes you were reaching for. It is a "not yet" that leaves everything open and asks you to keep standing there holding it.

I can imagine that Abraham and Sarah felt the same way. They were promised a son but waited twenty-five years between the promise and the sound of him crying. Twenty-five years of not yet.

The promise never changed. Only the timing was withheld, and the timing is so often the part that hurts.

Psalm 27:14 is a good verse for times like these, as it says, "Wait for the Lord. Be strong, and let your heart take courage. Yes, wait for the Lord."

It never promises that waiting will feel good. It assumes it will not. That is why courage is in the verse at all. You do not need courage for the easy thing.

Theo does not need to understand why now and not in five minutes. He needs to trust that I have a reason.

And I do. He has had plenty of TV for one day. There is a delicious dinner on the table that I have just spent an hour making. The shoes have to go on now because if we leave in ten minutes we miss the thing he has been looking forward to all week.

He cannot see any of that. He can only see the immediate and gets annoyed that I have interrupted him.

So today, if you are in a season of waiting when nothing seems to be moving, when God is silent or has answered not yet, know that it is moving. He is arranging things you cannot see, in an order you would not have chosen, at a pace that is not late.

Trust His timing the way I am asking my boys to trust mine. Not because you can see the reason, but because the One giving the answer can see the whole evening while you are still watching the next minute.