Phyllis Beveridge Nissila
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. (2Peter 3:9, KJV)
Embedded in the race is an urgency for immediate justice.
The cause of what wrong has been done an individual or people group varies and may be misinterpreted, of course.
Nevertheless we long for retribution compelled by said urgency–especially when what’s wrong is, indeed, wrong, destructive, heart-breaking–murderous, even.
We may not be able to quote chapter and verse, but there is the real pain and frustration, the sense that, wait, something is not right about what we see, hear, experience.
We come to learn that Pied Pipers abound. There are those that lie to us, twist and spin what, on the ground of reality and/or in the grounding of God’s Word, we know somehow or specifically to be fundamentally deceptive.
We become cautious, some bend to cynicism…
This sense of justice stems from our beginnings. It’s built in, you might say.
The infant exits the soft warmth of the womb into a rush of air, cold, bright–flailing limbs sensing, perhaps, something had happened to the gentle enclosure it experienced before its world suddenly broke open.
The baby begins to know hunger and makes a loud noise.
Lo, what are these, too, in this strange new environ?
But somehow in the intricacy and precision of the designs of both baby and mother, food comes. Ah, cause-effect. If not immediately, baby keeps up his demands in the way he is learning.
(Side note: although, read this: the other day I watched a video of a newborn fresh from the drama of his birth, not flailing or squalling but with face at rest with big dark eyes opened wide.
Just. Looking.
It’s gaze shifting slowly back and forth, left, right, left, right, pausing in the middle…
Budding skeptic or scientist?
Or a newborn simply trying out something new and wondrous, I wondered, as I replayed this remarkable video.
No doubt, however, he would stop taking in the new experience very soon and hold forth for food.)
ON COMUPPANCE AND TIMING
In a righteous world, cause and effect are immediately linked, of course.
But we didn’t enter a righteous world.
ON LONG-SUFFERING
And we live in time, a very different dimension than eternity but also crafted by our Creator to affirm His “longsuffering,” i.e, patience, toward us who make our way through the slow-ticking process of maturation until we come to a spiritual fork in the road, you might put it–a new emergence of its own with the possibility of even more and very different wonders.
Consider also: even though the first man and woman–engineered with both precision and beauty and animated by God’s very breath–opened their eyes to a panoply of perfection to satisfy all the senses, they soon rebelled.
Although Adam and Eve had both walked in the soft, fragrant mists of Evening in Eden with their Creator, asking, learning, safe in the womb of His presence, they listened to, and acted on, another voice…
But, then, God did design us with free will as well*.
(Because what kind of God advertising perfect love wants robots–that is, artificial intelligence, emotion, or spirituality–in those who follow Him?
Also, if we are made in His image, why would we not have our own creative bent, our own longing for true love, our own quest for companionship to share and explore all of creation with us? For perfect love also extends choice. We want the other to want to be with us, not feel compelled to out of some sense of religious duty or seemingly irresistable force.
But in so gifting, we also face rejection.
Even God experiences this.
Selah!
And so we must learn also about how to right wrongs, exact what justice we may and can, and look to our Image-Maker for instructions–no matter the tyranny of the urgent because following the demands of our own counsel, or those possessing what the flesh values in beauty, bucks, and brawn, is not always the wisest choice.
ON HIS JUSTICE
That said, however, not all spend time learning what HIS justice is, how and why it is the better choice.
Impatience and, yes, even righteous anger, compel us to take another track, follow another timeline–not necessarily the right, or “fullness” of time as God does things, for we are human, and until the “time to choose the better way” has come, rushing into battle using only human ordnance (that has not yet reached obsolescence) feels so right. Indeed, with no greater weapons stash, we know no other as the wolves howl closer…
But God knew this, too, about us, that is, the impossible task of righting real wrongs, the patience it requires which He reveals to us when in the prisons of our tears and fears we seek His answers and with new eyes and ears comprehend His Word, words, and illustrations chronicled in every genre of both Old and New Testaments.
Experienced in our own lives, too, as the clock ticks on, and we stumble forward as best we can to a greater and greater comprehension of all things Him.
Consider this commentary in the book of Jeremiah chapter 33 verses 1-13:
Moreover the word of the Lord came unto Jeremiah the second time, while he was yet shut up in the court of the prison, saying,
2 Thus saith the Lord the maker thereof, the Lord that formed it, to establish it; the Lord is his name;
3 Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.” continue reading…
THE BETTER WAY
We learn, albeit slowly, even as our ways are not His ways, our thoughts not His, nor our concept of time not His, it is only God’s justice that will last through all time and into eternity.
And when we are invited to place our faith and trust in this, a whole other new and lasting world opens up. Sometimeseven like physical birth, of a sudden.
But other times, usually most, it opens up gradually as we grow and mature, choosing to operate in the brighter, clearer environment of God’s counsel and commands (see Isaiah 55:8-9) and experiencing the causes and effects of our own choices.
But here is what seems foolishness to mere human warriors: how can the fruit of God’s Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, mercy, and self-control…) have more power and effect, bring more justice, than the spirit of man that pounds the drums of battle and operates increasingly more-potent ordnance in an urgency to have done with even real evil NOW?
I mean, fast (and however dirty) justice by any means is certainly mandated to STOP the immediate victims of war, most often women and children.
Right?
RIGHT!
And sometimes that’s the order of the day.
But there is another order, battle plan, so to speak, voiced through the analogy of the harvest and beyond: “The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine” (an early expression from Greek philosophy originally referring to the sometimes slow but always exact “Divine vengeance”.) (source).
In spiritual parlance there is but one God and, yielding to His battlefield wisdom, it is the fruit of His Spirit called longsuffering, aka patience as previously noted, that effects greatest and lasting success.
Just because we live in the dimension called time, which I sometimes think is merely eternity “slowed down” because of God’s love and patience toward us (as implied in the opening verse) doesn’t mean that in eternal reality there is not an immediacy of cause and effect we will only compehend once we are there.
BUT HERE’S THE BEST NEWS ON THE EVERLASTING BATTLE PLAN–IT’S ALREADY WON FOR US NOT BY US BOTH ON THE GROUND AND IN THE HEAVENS OUTSIDE TIME
But, lo, consider another of God’s perfect designs that, as put in John 3:16, is the best and wisest of all battle plans but not just for one hour, day, season, nation, or administrative “term”:
[He] so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John3:16)
Consider God’s perfect justice for all time and eternity: Jesus, Who allowed them to mock, beat, torture, and impale His human form on that crude, cross-timbered, bloody altar as not merely a one-time lamb sacrificed for a temporary reprieve of evil’s consequences, but for a one-time, all-time-and-eternity sacrifice for everyone who puts faith in Him for eternal reconciliation with the Creator.
In the fullness of time.
Selah.
You might say that since then we have been in a mop-up campaign on the battleground of terra firma.
AS WE THEN AND NOW OCCUPY…
And one more gift: Jesus told us He would send that Holy Spirit in His physical absence to teach and guide us.
God’s own Spirit our spiritual umbilical cord, you might say, to search hearts and renew minds as daily He conforms us into Christ’s image as we both walk in and share the good news of salvation.
In the meantime, however, and from the plentiful analogies drawn from farm country in which I live, this encouragement and comfort:
July Verses
In July, we wait,
water, weed, and watch
through the hot, hazy days
in the drama of growth slowed
between seed and harvest,
in the greening.
But beneath,
thirsty roots gather strength,
push deep,
wait on the Lord of the harvest
Who in due time,
in the fullness of it,
brings the fruit.
Seeded deep in the wait is also
what the thirsty soul knows
in the heat and the haze,
the watering, weeding, and watching:
“The Lord is good unto them that wait for him,
to the soul that seeketh him” (Lamentations 3:25).
And from the harvest to the wheat mills to the bread of life (let the reader understand).
ONCE MORE ON PATIENCE
Although waiting can be hard, our loving, patient God’s justice proves meet, as in suitable. Because, as noted above, He wishes none to perish and all, by their free choice, to “come to repentence,” the blood, sweat, and tears on the ground here a mere vapor of time…
It just takes some of us a little more (time) than others to realize victory in battles of every kind, spiritual and worldly, more time to conceive, plan, and execute.
Victory can begin today.*
~~~~~
*Should you choose to join the rank and file today, here is more information on why and how
See related post: https://pnissila.blog/2019/10/27/dont-wait-for-it-on-time-free-will-and-patience/
pnissila 
On (Dying) Snakes and (Defeated) Satan: 2024 Version–Again, Remain on Guard, the Venom Might be Draining but the Vitriol Still Menaces (during the lame duck season)
Phyllis Beveridge Nissila
originally published October 19, 2014
2024: Now that the election season is virtually concluded in the United States, one is hearing many warnings concerning not resting on any laurels on the winning side. There are still over 70 days remaining until the new administration is officially sworn in. I think the following post might support this advice from not only a secular but also a spiritual persepctive. – pbn
ON SNAKES
It is said of a snake that even though its head may be cut off, it takes a while for its slow metabolism to respond. In the interim, sometimes up to an hour, as its tail thrashes about destroying whatever is in its way. Continue reading →