When God delays and suffering results, we sometimes question what God is doing.

“Lord, if you had been here,” Martha lamented about Lazarus, ​“my brother would not have died.”

One delay worth pondering is found in the first chapter of Matthew: the angel’s appearance to Joseph.

It’s difficult to tell how much time passed between the annunciation to Mary and Joseph’s dream — a day, a week, a month? But it’s clear there was a gap between the two angelic messages. And that gap is the rub.

Mimi Dixon invites us to ask, Why didn’t the angel appear earlier? Why not before Joseph made plans to dismiss Mary quietly? She writes: 

God, we must remember, times things to perfection, and the reason is always for our good… What if apparent delays and shattered dreams are a way of recalibrating our relationship with God? What if God is deliberately drawing our attention away from circumstances into a responsive, listening posture of receptivity? 

Now, before jumping to the conclusion that God causes all forms of human suffering ​“to teach us a lesson,” we should recall the healing ministry of Jesus that revealed the heart of God. But it appears that God does sometimes wait with information, wait with the cure, if the waiting is what we need.

When we wait for something good and it is delayed for whatever reason, one thing is clear: if we offer our waiting to God, if we accept our current state without resigning to despair, if we keep seeking, knocking, asking… God will work in the waiting for our good.