God Waited a Thousand Years
In my dark days of turning from God, I couldn't forgive others in my heart.
Couldn't forgive my divorced parents.
Couldn't forgive God for taking my siblings.
Couldn't forgive myself for the anger + pride that consumed my heart.
So when I finally did peace in the Lord 15 years later, I think of God's faithfulness and unending mercy + love, and I'm simply and humbly moved to tears.
Because I can't fathom how He could've forgiven me.
I turned from him for over half my life! Here I am - HIS beloved, HIS creation, made to love, glorify, and praise Him. Yet, I just wasted half my life in anger and pride.
I can't imagine how much heartache I must've caused Him.
In Genesis 6, we see God's heartache over the wickedness of man. This particular verse speaks directly to me: "And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart."
He planned to blot out every man from the face of the ground.
But God waited.
When His first creations, Adam and Eve, first disappointed Him, He waited.
When Cain killed Abel, He waited.
When God saw the corrupted and sinful state of the world, He waited.
He waited roughly 1,600 years after Adam and Eve's first bite of the forbidden fruit to ask Noah to build an ark. And even then, He waited until the ark was built to wipe out mankind.
If you could live that long, could you forgive someone your whole life? In Matthew, Jesus said to forgive others seventy times seven times. Yet we see God forgiving for 1,600 years.
And after the Flood, God made a promise to never flood the earth again.
No matter how corrupted and sinful the world becomes.
No matter how much we turn from Him.
No matter how much it grieves His beautiful Heart.
Instead, we know that He waited (another 2,000+ years!) to send His perfect Son to pay an unforgivable price.
This New Year -- whether you're struggling with forgiving your divorced parents or you've turned from God, like I did -- know that God is waiting.
He would wait thousands of years for you.
How incredibly, overwhelmingly beautiful is our God who loves us beyond measure.
Peace be with you, my gorgeous faithful sister.