Therefore the LORD waits to be gracious to you
Isaiah 30:18
I would like to share with you something I came across recently when reading a sermon by G.H. Morrison (1866-1928) of the Wellington Church, Glasgow, known as ‘Morrison of Glasgow’ – it is found in a sermon entitled ‘the Doctrine of Delays’ from the Parable of the Persistent widow in Luke 18.
And so in closing I would say to you: do not lose heart at the delays of God… there is more love in God’s slow method than you think. I was staying the other week with some friends in Ireland, when word came that our friend’s place of business had been broken into. It was a holiday and he was away in Galway, and was not to come again until that evening. Well, he came home, very tired and famished, and a foolish wife would have rushed out to meet him with the news, but his wife was not foolish, she was Scotch and sensible, and she let him wash and eat and rest himself a little; and then when he was ready to see things rightly she broke the news, and I saw that there was love in that delay… You who are mothers here, and who look back on those sweet years when your innocent children played about your feet, had you never some great news to tell your children, yet you deliberately withheld it for a time? “If we tell them tonight there will be not one wink of sleep; if we tell them when they waken there will not be one bite of breakfast”; and so deliberately you held back the blessing, and you did it just because you loved them so. If you then being evil, act like that, is it incredible that God should do the same? Is it fair to distrust our Father, to say He has no pity, to charge the heavens with being brass above us? I think it is wiser to pray on, to strive on, casting all doubts to the devil who inspired them; believing in a love that never mocks us, and that will give us our heart’s desire in His own time.
I found this helpful and I hope you do as well.
Bill Hughes