“How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?”. (Psalm 13:1, NIV)

     James Moore once wrote about a beautiful spring day. A little girl went for a walk with her grandfather. As they sauntered along, enjoying the beauty of God’s creation, they came upon a garden. The little girl ran ahead and found a gorgeous rosebush covered with roses. Some of the roses were still buds and some were in full bloom. The little girl plucked one of the rosebuds and examined it closely. Then, with her  fingers, she tried to open the rosebud and bring it to full bloom. But it didn’t work. Instead, the petals fell away and dropped to the ground, and she was left holding nothing but an empty stem. Exasperated, she said to her grandfather, “Gramps, I don’t get it. When God opens a flower, it looks so beautiful, but when I try to do it, it falls apart.” To which her grandfather answered, “God is more patient than we are. He knows that some things just take time and can’t be rushed. He slowly and tenderly unfolds the rose, and he does the same thing with our lives. We can’t rush the process. So, we just take it one day at a time and trust him to unfold the stages and moments of our lives just as we trust him to unfold the rose.”

     In one of his most challenging Psalms, David asked God why God wasn’t responding to his prayers. “How long?” is a question that has perplexed God’s people throughout the ages. Why does heaven remain silent when we desperately seek an answer from God?

     David’s words speak to those of us whose prayers for healing have not been answered. Or for the persons whose pleas for God’s guidance have been met with silence. Or the individual whose cry for reconciliation with a loved one seems to have fallen on deaf ears.

     And yet, “How long?” is only part of David’s testimony. The story above is an example of the reality that God’s sense of timing often runs counter to our own. David concludes his lament with the following expression of faith:

  But I trust in your unfailing love;
 my heart rejoices in your salvation (Psalm 13:5).

     The story above is an example of the reality that God’s timing is different than ours. Like a rose waiting to blossom, God does not respond to our prayers in accordance with our hopes and expectations.

     Nonetheless, David’s confidence in God’s unfailing love offers each of us the assurance that God always grants us what we need when we need it the most. And if he could offer you a word of encouragement today, I believe David would say something like this:
 

Never, ever stop praying. God might even now be unfolding a beautiful rose
in your life—but it will happen in his time.
Persistence is the key, along with the belief that good things lie ahead.