Psalm 70:5 But as for me, I am poor and needy;
    come quickly to me, O God.
You are my help and my deliverer;
    Lord, do not delay.

Even David, as much as he had experienced God in many ways, had trouble with God’s timing. The idea of urging God not to be late seems almost amusing to me, but our human time frame feels that way fairly often. The thing is, we perceive time in proportion to what we have already experienced. For an infant, an hour is an appreciable fraction of their entire life! As we grow older, that ratio naturally changes, and days and even years seem to whip past at high speed. Since God is from eternity past, and will be for eternity future, He naturally doesn’t have that issue. The problem isn’t with His timing, but with our perception of it. (Actually, the problem is never with God, whatever it might be, but always with us.) Our perception of time varies with emotions as well. Various studies have been done of psychological time dilation, which is when time seems to slow down in moments of high stress. For example, earthquakes always seem to last longer for those experiencing them than they do in objective fact. I think that’s the sort of thing David was going through when he wrote this Psalm. Like David, we often need to take a deep breath, calm down, and ask God to enable us to see things more objectively. As God told Habakkuk, “For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay.” (Habakkuk 2:3) Our faith and trust need to grow until we are totally at peace with that, and that is a work only God can do in our hearts.

This certainly applies to me, but since I’ve made it to 76 so far, I have a rather different perspective than I did in my 20s! At this point, my bigger issue is with procrastination, putting things off when there is no reason to do so. Saying that, however, I realize there have been times when my delaying action was actually God’s plan to make things turn out better than they would have otherwise, so I’m not to be down on myself. My goal is to be so in tune with my Lord that I flow on His schedule, neither holding back nor champing at the bit. His timing is always perfect, whatever it might seem like to me.

Father, thank You for the training You’ve given me in this. Help me apply it fully, being and doing where and what You desire, in Your perfect timing, for Your glory. Thank You. Praise God!