Psalm 37:34 Wait on the LORD, and keep his way, and he shall exalt thee to inherit the land: when the wicked are cut off, thou shalt see it.
I don’t know what you are going to have for breakfast this morning, but breakfast sure is a lot more appealing and attractive now than it was an hour ago. An hour ago it was raw eggs, raw bacon, and dough, but now it is a hot breakfast. Or it could be worse. You could be eating cereal, but you can only imagine what that would have looked like before it hit the factory. It is a matter of timing.
Think about your spouse. Think about your spouse in sixth grade and now. The difference is timing. The sixth grader who would have been repulsive to you as a kid is now your beloved. The difference is timing. Think about the difference between a symphony and the cacophony of sounds when the instruments are warming up. The difference is timing.
You are either fretting or “faithing” today, but you are probably not doing both at the same time. Psalm 37 says, “Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity.” It is so easy to look around us and fret about people who are doing wrong. We may even envy them because in the short run it seems like doing wrong is winning out. Yet, the Bible says we are to trust, to delight, to commit, to rest, and to wait in and on the Lord. Don’t fret! Have faith!
There are two things to remember. First, timing is everything. So often timing is the difference between good and bad. There are many time designations in this psalm. There are words like “soon” and phrases like “their day is coming.” There are words like “evermore,” “forever,” and “in time.” So, timing is everything.
Second, God is the only One Who understands time. We are notoriously poor judges of time. If you ask someone about something, they may say, “Well, that was a long time ago.” What does that mean? If a five-year-old says, “That was a long time ago,” that is a totally different thing than if a fifty-year-old claims that something happened a long time ago.
When you are five, everything seems longer than it actually is. When you are ninety-five, everything seems shorter than it actually is. I came to the conclusion recently that I had the best perspective of time when I was thirty-five. Before that things seemed long and after that things seemed short. I remember my daughter saying when she was a kid, “Dad, why does the Bible say life is so short when it seems so long.” The reason for that is because God is the only One Who understands time.
The bottom line is that patience is the difference between fret and faith. Take a step; God won’t fail you. Verse 25 says, “I have been young, and now am old: yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.” God will not fail you, and faith oftentimes looks a lot like patience.