When God is Impatient

Have you ever watched someone you love deeply suffer? Has your heart ever been shredded by the pain of those you care about? Have you reached that breaking point where you can’t take it anymore and you stop at nothing to bring relief to that person, no matter the cost to you (and then there are those agonizing times when there is absolutely nothing you can do to ease their suffering)? Did you know that’s how God feels about the suffering of His people? When you hurt, He hurts. It grieves Him to see you suffer. He feels that tortured, restless impatience that you’ve felt when your spouse or child or close friend was in pain (even if the pain/painful circumstance was partly their own fault). Take some time to think about this passage in Judges 10.

Judges is a dark book. A book where it seems that all God’s people do is forsake Him and all He does is bring judgment again and again. By the time you get to Judges 10, we are already several cycles into this idolatry-judgment-repentance-rescue paradigm. Once again, Israel has walked away from God and is worshipping idols. God uses the Philistines and Ammonites to “crush and oppress” the Israelites. They are “severely distressed,” and they recognize that their suffering has come because they “have forsaken our God.” They ask God for help, and He reminds them that they were the ones who discarded Him in favor of other gods. He tells them to go ask their new gods for help. The people respond to God by saying, “We have sinned; do whatever seems good to You. But please deliver us.”

Now think about it. This cycle has already happened multiple times. Israel has a track record: a track record that shows that as soon as they are not in distress, they abandon God again. Frankly, they are not really deserving of help/rescue. They have brought suffering on themselves. What is God’s response towards them at this point? The text says, “and He became impatient over the misery of Israel.” Another translation puts it, “His soul could no longer endure the misery of Israel.” Wow. God is moved by the pain of His people. He feels their hurt. It affects Him. Reader, God is easily moved to compassion by your misery. God sees what’s hurting you, and it sits heavily on Him too. His love moves Him to act on your behalf. He is not indifferent to your need for rescue and comfort.

This truth shows up in the prophets too. God will talk about “waiting a long time” to bring rescue to His people, “but now I will cry out…I will lay waste mountains…I will lead the blind…I will turn darkness to light…” He gets to this point where He will move heaven and earth to come to the aid of His people. The same way you do when you can’t stand the suffering of the people you care about. And the sweet thing is, although we are often helpless in the face of our loved ones’ pain, He never is. He is always able to act. So take heart. He sees and knows; He feels your grief with you, and He will act on your behalf.

Good Friday Poem

Good Friday

     George Herbert

O my chief Good,
How shall I measure out thy blood?
How shall I count what thee befell,
And each grief tell?

Shall I thy woes
Number according to thy foes?
Or, since one star show'd thy first breath,
Shall all thy death?

Or shall each leaf,
Which falls in Autumn, score a grief?
Or cannot leaves, but fruit be sign
Of the true vine?

Then let each hour
Of my whole life one grief devour:
That thy distress through all may run,
And be my sun.

Or rather let
My several sins their sorrows get;
That as each beast his cure doth know,
Each sin may so.

Since blood is fittest, Lord to write
Thy sorrows in, and bloody fight;
My heart hath store, write there, where in
One box doth lie both ink and sin:

That when sin spies so many foes,
Thy whips, thy nails, thy wounds, thy woes
All come to lodge there, sin may say,
'No room for me', and fly away.

Sin being gone, oh fill the place,
And keep possession with thy grace;
Lest sin take courage and return,
And all the writings blot or burn.