I am often caught in the modern-day trend of thinking where if I have to wait more than 10 seconds for anything, I get impatient.  It seems like red lights at traffic intersections take forever and my feeling is that sitting through a light will add 10 minutes of driving time to wherever I am going.  I have timed them with my watch.  The truth? They take from 30 seconds to 1 minute to cycle through-depending upon the light.  Wow!  Our minds are programmed to listen to the liar who make us anguish and impatient!  This leads us to do things of our own doings to “help us out!”  My thoughts drift to Abraham – who was told that he and his wife would have a child.  More than 10 seconds pass.  Decades pass.  He and his wife are getting older.  He figures he will help things out, so he sleeps with somebody else to get this child born.  Obviously God needs help, right?   My thoughts then go to Israel.  They prayed for hundreds of years to be delivered from Egypt’s bondage.  That means some people actually died never seeing their release.  I wonder how many of them tried things on their own?  I wonder how it worked for them?  Then I think of the man in John 9 who was born blind.

John 9:1-4,

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3 Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. 4 We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work…” (ESV)

In God’s goodness, he chose to use this man to demonstrate His workmanship.  His goodness.  It says he was born that way, and that by this time he was a blind “man.”  So, he was perhaps 20?  30?  That is a long time to wait!  A long time to be blind.  But Jesus did come.  In HIS time.  Now the man – for the first time EVER – can see.  I wonder how he felt the first time he actually saw blue, or clouds, or water?  Amazing.   But did you catch verse 4?  Jesus pulls a fast one in His words!  Jesus does the works of God, then He says “We must do the works of him who sent me while it is day…”  He included his disciples in His work.  He also includes us!  We are a part of the work God is doing among us.  There is a time coming, Jesus says, when no one will be able to work.  But until that time, get after it!  “Git ‘er done!”