Divine Delay: A Tale of Love That’s Older Than Time

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In the beginning, God created divine delay. Genesis doesn’t say that in so many words, but ever since, “Let there be light,” one thing or another has sat purposefully on hold. Hold the trees until day three, the fish and fowl until day five, man until day six. And all your hopes and dreams until…

Most teachers will probably tell you they learn more than their students. When I taught my kindergarteners about the creation, I don’t know if they really gained a new appreciation for God’s providence, or remembered it if they did. But I did. Every year, this lesson prepared for five-year-olds reminded an aging single woman that God’s delays meant he loved her.

Divine Delay in Kindergarten-ese

“Do you think the trees were pretty excited about coming to earth?” I’d ask my class as they drew–or scribbled–their pictures of the third day of creation. Varied conglomerations of brown, blue, and green, and probably some purple and red, vaguely depicted land, sea, and vegetation.

“Yes!” they’d obediently answer, maybe not because they really agreed–can trees be excited?–but because they thought that was the answer I expected.

“Do you think they were so excited they wanted to come on the first day?” I said.

Again, the inevitable, “Yes!”

“What if they begged Heavenly Father to send them on the first day so much that he finally said, ‘Oh, all right. You can go.’ What would have happened?”

“Nooo!” a few would call out solemnly. They knew a trick question when they heard one.

“Why couldn’t they come on the first day?” I asked.

“Because God said!” This answer, too, was inevitable.

It took some prompting to get to why God said, but we made it eventually.

“Was there any land on the first day?”

“No.”

“Where would the trees grow?”

And a few light bulbs went on. “They had to wait for the land!”

Yes, God loved the trees so much that no matter how badly they wanted to start their role in his story, he divinely delayed their existence until he’d prepared a place for them to play their part.

And on the lesson went. The birds couldn’t come until there was air to soar through and a place to rest. The fish couldn’t come until they had a sea to live in. Man couldn’t come until he had land to walk on, water to drink, fruit and meat to sustain himself. And sometimes the things we want most can’t come until…well, God might be the only one who really knows what has to happen first, but it does have to happen first, or our blessings will have no place to take root.

You didn’t think a line of questioning about excited trees could end so profoundly, did you?

But I confess–while this concept has comforted me through the years, the more time passes, the more I wonder. What was happening with those impatient but trusting trees while God was preparing their land? Were they caught in some kind of undefined limbo, just as void and formless as the earth was before God said, “Let there be light”?

Am I without form and void until God says, “Let there be a husband”?

Or did he still plant us somewhere?

Divine Delay as Taught by a Tray of Seedlings

For the last several years, we’ve started our own seeds indoors. Tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, peppers. It’s delightful watching those first green leaves come up. I always smile and welcome them. Everyone needs something to nurture, and if it can’t be a family of my own yet, at least I have plants. In my nephew’s apt words, they are my babies.

For several weeks, I watch them grow, reaching toward the lights above. Some of the squash plants even blossom. They’re happy little plants.

But there comes a day when they need more. Their roots are bursting at the seams. They’re touching the lights we can’t raise any higher. Full grown, the squash will be three feet wide, the tomatoes four or five feet tall, the cucumber vines able to crawl over an entire 4×8 grow box and beyond. They can’t be that in a four-celled plastic pot. If they stay there, they’ll die.

Around the beginning of May, about six weeks into their lives, I really feel for them. They need to get in the ground, to have room to spread to their full potential. Some leaves turn yellow and dry out. Then a few more, and a few more. The once healthy seedlings become almost sickly as they struggle in their confinement, and I know if they can just get to the garden, they’ll thrive. They’re ready. So ready.

But the conditions aren’t. We still get freezing temperatures at the beginning of May. If they’re transplanted too early, the happy, fruitful life ahead of them could be snuffed out in one frosty night. Not to mention all the effort that went into growing them.

So, I care for them the best I can and give them pep talks. “Hang in there. A couple more weeks and you can live in the garden. I promise you’ll have an amazing life there. Just hold on.” (I’m not making this up to get a point across. I really do talk to them this way. You can call me crazy, but we get a pretty decent harvest, so…don’t knock it ’til you try it.)

Now, I am not an expert seed-starter. Not by a long shot. And all the expert seed-starters reading this say, “Amen.” Maybe the life of a seedling isn’t supposed to look like this. Maybe there’s no reason they shouldn’t be gorgeous and robust when they go in the ground. The ones at the garden center look plenty healthy. I’m probably doing a few things wrong.

But perhaps I’m doing it just the right way for me because if the condition of our plants didn’t so exactly parallel my own, I might never have realized that God’s love for me exactly parallels mine for our plants.

Love Hurts

I’m not without form and void any more than those seedlings. We are all of us very much in existence, trying to grow into the life we’re meant to live. But I commiserate with them. I know how it feels to be stuck where your roots and leaves and stems have insufficient room, to feel like everything you are and everything you’re supposed to be is trapped in a tiny plastic pot that has held you far longer than it was intended to. I’ve done my share of staring out the window at the garden and longing for a place in it, for that freedom to be what God designed me to be, bear the fruit he designed me to bear, and be happy. I’ve felt just as withered as those dried up leaves.

Divine delay is the pits.

But it might be just as hard on the detainer as it is on the detained.

When my dad died, I think all of his children hoped he’d still be pulling for us over there. Watching out for us. Well, the veil between heaven and earth has been thick, and if he’s done any of that, I haven’t seen it.

Sometimes I feel pretty abandoned.

But maybe I’ve imagined more power into his hands than he actually has, and therefore, given him a lot of flak he doesn’t deserve. How can he make happen what God himself has delayed? Change what God has ordained? I’m sure he has a much better perspective of God’s workings than we do and wouldn’t even try. He probably knows it’ll all be well in the end, however it ends. But still–my sister had an experience that showed her our sorrows have not been easy for him to watch.

I don’t think God likes watching them any better.

How desperately did he want to pull his Son off the cross, to not let him go there in the first place? To tell him in Gethsemane that he didn’t have to drink from this cup?

But it was necessary. And Jesus was willing. A comparatively short period of immense suffering in exchange for eternities of indescribable joy.

My problems aren’t even a microscopic particle of a drop in the bucket next to what the Savior endured, but God knows they still hurt. On a way, way, way smaller level, it’s the same story. His child calling out, “Why have you forsaken me?” and him up there knowing he hasn’t. Knowing I can’t see that from my little cross, and weeping for me and with me even though he also knows what’s waiting for me on the other side of all this.

The garden.

Divine Delay is a Big Picture

Anyone who’s ever waited on God has probably been told at least once, “Maybe God is waiting on you.”

He might be. We all have to take that honest look at ourselves.

But nine times out of ten, possibly ten times out of ten, when we pray for something, we’re not the only ducks he has to get lined up. In my case, there’s at least one other person he’s working on besides me. And I pray for him. He’s the land God is preparing for this anxious little tree. I’m the land God is preparing for him. And I don’t doubt there’s a whole bundle of circumstances God is preparing for both of us. Or preparing both of us for.

Authors have to write the entire story, not just one character. Not just one scene.

If you’ve taken that honest look at yourself and all you can do is send God a helpless shrug and say, “I don’t know what else you want me to do,” maybe he already has you lined up where he needs you. Stay there. The delay will only increase if he has to round you up again. You might feel like a shriveling cucumber plant in a too-small pot, but he knows. He knows you need to be in the garden. And when the temperature is right, whatever that means for you, he’ll plant you there. It might not be the garden you always imagined. But it will be the happiest place you’ve ever been.

And their soul shall be as a watered garden; and they shall not sorrow any more at all.

Jeremiah 31:12

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