“Jesus reached out and touched him. “I am willing,” he said. “Be healed!” And instantly the leprosy disappeared.”

Blame it on Amazon Prime.  We now expect that our purchases should be almost instantaneous. When we now go online to a site and see that it will take more than two days for something to arrive we might end up looking elsewhere until we find a retailer who will make the delivery happen as fast as we desire.  Of course, this doesn’t always work out as planned.  I made a “last minute” Christmas gift decision for Patti.  The package was promised to be delivered by December 20th.  Plenty of time, I thought. The 20th passed, the weekend was here, it became the 24th and I saw from the FedEx tracking that the package went out on the truck at 7:06AM for delivery later that day. No sweat, it would make it.  At 8:00pm on Christmas Eve I went back online to track the package only to find that the driver had returned to their depot without delivering the package.  After a frustrated call with one of their customer service reps, I was told, “the driver just ran out of time:”  As hard as that was to accept as a reasoning, that sometime happens; we all just can run out of time.  The lesson here is that what we promise to our consumers, let’s be cognizant of their expectations and how we manage them. What I would have preferred was to have been called the morning of 12/24 and given the choice of a 12/26 delivery or driving to the FedEx service center and picking up the package myself. With that choice, instantaneous, would have been my decision.

God is not always about instantaneous and I do sometimes ponder why, when made in His image, we are so much about instant gratification.  Possibly, this flaw of ours was the real reason that Eve took the fruit.  So, here we sit, wanting God to answer all of our prayers today.  Sometimes He does and it certainly was in Jesus’ way to heal and cure the sick on the spot.  But, today, we sometimes just have to wait, be patient, and assure that our faith is strong and able to withstand doubts and fears.  This week, as we think about the coming goals for 2013, it would be unrealistic to think that they will all instantaneously be achieved.  Many times, the best in our lives comes from the wait and the journey to get there.  So, let’s not be too caught up on the instantaneous but instead put our time frame in His hands.

Reference: Matthew 8:3 (New Living Translation)