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From Rev. Bill Johnson

Time Is On Our Side, a reflection on 2 Peter 3:8-15

So here comes the church, down through history…all candles and bells and incense and hymns and crusades and reformations. At times the church’s luster shone so brightly we had to squint through the glare just to see it. Other times the church appeared to be little more than a stumbling, halting, tattered band of weary pilgrims. And always, always there has been the shadows lurking in the background. Temptation, suffering, sin and death nipping at the heels of the church, year after year, relentlessly pestering and persecuting and trying to cut the weak ones from the flock.

Through it all the church has been singing, praying, preaching, healing, forgiving, hoping, and waiting. Waiting for fulfillment of God’s kingdom. Waiting for God’s peace to come, and for that peace to be given “not as the world gives.” Waiting, finally, for righteousness and peace to kiss each other. Jesus started something, and here we are, the church, still awaiting its fulfillment.

A watching world will sometimes mock and chide the waiting church as if its religious activity were somehow a burden, as if discipleship were a form of slavery. The life of faith is reduced in the eyes of the unconvinced to a crippling weight, a “bounden duty”, a needless crutch. A reasonable person might ask how in the world—or for that matter, why in the world—the church has hung in there so long? A persons’ time is so brief…how can God’s people spend it waiting for something that has taken so long already?

The only answer that can be given is, of course, that the church has been here these many years because God has wanted it that way. It is the strong and sustaining hand of God—and not the cleverness and determination of church members—that has kept Christ’s light shining through the generations. God has done this, according to the author of 2 Peter, for one particular end: so that in the songs, prayers, preaching, healing, forgiveness and hope practiced by Jesus, someone will discover Jesus himself, and having seen Jesus will know the heart of God.

So it turns out that all this waiting—and time itself—is God’s helper. The Lord of Eternity is eternally patient. For the people of God, this time on earth is for rehearsing, practicing, learning how to be in God’s presence full-time. We have just enough time, you and I, to get the lessons right…and not a moment to spare. Our Lord is such a patient teacher! And in God’s infinite patience we are learning that time is on our side.